The biggest threat to a nonprofit electronic newsletter is the spam filter. Nowadays there is so much junk floating around the Internet that any kind of mass mailing could result in your newsletter being mistaken for spam. And some email providers might then blacklist you, making it impossible for your nonprofit to send to anyone else who uses email services like Yahoo! or AOL.
There are a couple of ways for your group to avoid the spam challenge:
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Use an email marketing system. Two that immediately come to mind are iContact and Constant Contact. With both a subscriber to your newsletter has to confirm that they do want to receive the electronic communication. These plans aren’t free (Some run about $12-15 per month for up to 500 subscribers.) but they do come with some nice design templates that can make your communication look very professional.
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The other option is to distribute your newsletter through social media. Post the info on a blog or even better, on Facebook. Many people check Facebook even more than their email. If someone becomes a fan of your nonprofit’s page, then they’ll automatically get your latest news as soon as you post it. It’s also much easier to forward a newsletter through social media.
In the final post of this series, we’ll look at another mistake that can doom your e-newsletter no matter how you distribute it.
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