The design should be compelling and match closely with your organization’s website, unless of course your organization has a terrible website. It should have some sort of graphical header, but not much larger than 80 pixels high. Especially if you have an “at work” target audience, you will want to focus on what viewers will be able to see in the Outlook Preview Pane. Only allow space for a paragraph or two of text per article, and post the rest on your website. Ultimately, you want to use the newsletter as a tool to drive traffic to your website, so include five to seven links throughout the design.

Content, clearly, is also important because without something to say, your recipients won’t waste their time reading your e-mail. This is worth repeating - if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all. Keep it to a couple of good articles that relate to your clients. Give them a little bit of consulting for free. If they start to look forward to your e-mail because you give them insights they need and value, you have won.

Finally, you need the addresses for your distribution list. This is one of those places that gives small business owners headaches, especially after the federal anti-spam law CAN-SPAM was passed. The law now basically says that you must have permission from everyone on your list to send them a bulk commercial e-mail. That is, you must have some request from the individual to receive your messages, or a relationship with the recipient.

One question that always comes up: how often should I send? Most small business owners want to send something every week. Why not? If you have the list, use it right? Wrong.

While each client base is unique, and you should test different send times and days of the week, generally, a monthly newsletter is plenty for your customers. We’ve had great success with monthly newsletters for our clients, even sending every other month.