Email newsletters are a go-to tool for reaching our audiences with relevant visual, informative communications. Producing high-quality newsletters is a creative, collaborative and sometimes challenging process. Ensuring that your newsletters include must-have elements saves time and provides consistency, issue after issue, allowing you to focus on providing your readers with the most helpful and interesting content.

Let's explore the essentials that every newsletter needs:

* Logo

Placing your organization's logo or banner in place in your newsletter template is one of the easiest ways for your readers to become familiar with your organization and brand. It's a big help to ensure that your subscribers recognize that the newsletter isn't spam and is coming from you, an organization from whom they signed up to receive newsletters.

* Sender Information

Adding clear sender information to the footer area of your newsletter template is another way to build trust, brand recognition and interaction with your subscribers. People appreciate being able to easily find the contact information of the sender, including the website, privacy policy and other related resources.

* Unsubscribe Link

It's a must for people who have signed up for your newsletter to be able to unsubscribe easily, at any time. Providing a prominent, one-click unsubscribe link in every message that you send is the recommended best practice. It's poor practice to require a login to unsubscribe or to hide the unsubscribe link or place it in a small font. Make unsubscribing an easy experience for people who no longer choose to receive your newsletter, so they'll do so with a positive impression of your organization. A person who unsubscribes just may be the same person who recommends the newsletter to a colleague who could benefit from its relevant content.

* Links

Most newsletters include links because they are important bridges to additional knowledge, resources and engagement opportunities on your website. While the links will naturally vary based on your content for each issue, make it a quality-assurance practice to test that all links work for every issue before you send. Double-check that the standing links, including your website, privacy policy and unsubscribe links, work as well to prevent "page not found" errors.

Learn More About LISTSERV Newsletters

LISTSERV provides tools to create custom newsletter templates and also includes existing templates that are ready to use, no HTML coding needed. You'll find these tools on the LISTSERV 17.0 web interface.

Be sure to check out these two video tutorials.

Creating LISTSERV Newsletters:
http://www.lsoft.com/LearnLISTSERV#_eJ3ew30Bxg

Creating or Modifying LISTSERV Newsletter Templates:
http://www.lsoft.com/LearnLISTSERV#4L0B0SKBwfM

You can see samples of LISTSERV newsletters by visiting the demo site. The "Goode" list contains seven examples of creative and flexible ways you can present newsletter content. Additionally, feel free to log in to the demo site and view the entire library of newsletter templates under the "Newsletter Templates" menu to learn how the templates can be easily customized.

http://demo.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-DEMO.exe?A0=GOODE&S=b

Hope these newsletter must-haves are useful -- let us know what you think and, as always, get in touch about your email newsletter technology needs or with any feedback or questions. We are here to help!

Thanks and Happy Emailing!


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