Email Newsletter Management Problems

Since I work and breathe email newsletters for much of my work week, The Seven Deadly Sins of Email Marketing Management from Digital Web Magazine caught my attention.
Many B2B articles and magazines have repeatedly shown that companies easily get a return on investment (ROI) with their newsletters (when done right). The article discusses seven problem areas with email newsletter management:
1. Failing to test with multiple email clients
The first thing to do is accept your newsletter will never look perfect in all e-mail clients. There are just too many out there with their own interpretation of HTML and CSS. I wrote an article about designing newsletters for email.
2. Failing to spam-check the email copy before sending
If you use service provider for sending email, most likely it comes with a feature to check your newsletter’s spam score. Every one points to SiteSell’s free spam checker service.
3. Putting hurdles in the way of unsubscribing
Hey, if a reader wants off — make it easy. Don’t keep a reader who doesn’t want your newsletter. When a newsletter’s unsubscribe process is difficult, the reader simply creates a filter to divert the newsletter to the junk folder. It may not be a big deal to have extra readers, but the numbers add up and it also jinxes your numbers. This reader isn’t going to read the articles — therefore, that reader lowers your “articles read” metric. You want honest metrics. Let ’em go.
Funny thing is that we’ve been having a problem with a client’s newsletter because we made the unsubscribe process easy. Just click the link and you’re unsubscribed. No entering your email address. Unfortunately, the unique link has popped up on the web and bots like Googlebot are finding it and unintentionally unsubscribing us.
A robots.txt file isn’t in the cards for this situation. We’re still investigating a solution — a solution varies depending on newsletter management. Dori suggested one way checking the referrer on the unsubscribe page. If there is one (i.e., they came in via another web page), then don’t do the unsubscribe.
4. Neglecting to maintain the list’s invalid addresses
Sure, you want big subscriber numbers, but not when they have bad emails. Make less work for your email distribution service by cleaning out the bad emails. A service might do this for you automatically.
5. Becoming complacent
The article focuses on keeping an eye on stats and behaviors. I’m going to focus on the content. I’ve seen many (yes, “many”) high quality newsletters go downhill after a while. Their content changed from informational and useful to an ego-fest and self-promotion. Do 80/20 (80 percent useful content and 20 percent ads/promotions) and you’re A-OK
6. Sending content that isn’t relevant to what the user signed up for
Avoid this by having newsletter archives available online, or at least a few representative samples. You benefit more if all issues appear online. It’s original content.
7. Most importantly, emailing a user without their permission
No argument here. A practice that bugs me is a publisher adding your name to his subscription list after a personal email exchange that says nothing about subscribing to a newsletter. Exchanging emails doesn’t equal permission. In most cases, the reader will be upset and disappointed in this behavior — not a good way to start an email newsletter relationship.