3 Things to think about when sending messages – Newsletter Tips
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Morning all!
As you may all know, I deal with a lot of newsletters. I format and optimize newsletters, I set up accounts and I am frequently called on to troubleshoot.
Generally speaking, there is a lot of misinformation or lack of information in the author world about Mailing Lists and Newsletters. This is troubling to me. There are laws that authors need to follow when sending out newsletters to readers as well as when collecting names and email addresses of interested folk.
Because I’m always on the look out for things to share, I found the helpful graphic below when doing some reading this week.
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Clearly, this information is the Canadian version, but keep in mind that as authors you need to follow all the country’s laws as your audience is in most countries of the world. You don’t just follow the law of the country you live in.
Back to the graphic – it outlines three significant errors that I see all the time:
Have your readers given consent (and can you prove it)? In other words, do you have double opt-in in place on your Newsletter service of choice? Single opt-in theoretically allows anyone to sign someone else up without their permission
Make sure no part of your message is false or misleading. This should be an obvious point, but I still see authors using some version of “Open this note to win a new car” type of subject line – or mis-represent chances of winning in a giveaway.
Every note must contain and easy way to unsubscribe as well as a mailing address.
The last point is something that is pretty easily put in place on most Newsletter services, but lately I’ve been seeing a lot of Mailerlite notes come out with only a website URL in the place of a mailing address. Is this a huge deal? In the big picture likely you won’t be fined for this, however it is something that your competitors can get you in trouble for.
With some of the changes that are being brought into play in the EU, I’m working on a guide for authors to be compliant with the latest.
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Stay tuned for more information on the legalities coming out of the EU!
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