Email newsletters are still a valuable marketing tool to convert interested prospects into customers, and get customers to keep returning.  They’re widely used by publishers to drive traffic back to their main site, or as a benefit for paid subscribers.  Many small businesses embark on an email newsletter to communicate with their customers, but struggle to create compelling content and can fall foul of spam reports and blacklisting.  These days there are many web-based providers, such as constant contact or mailchimp, to make the actual sending and list management easy, but the strategy and content creation still falls to the business.  Here are my five golden rules, based on best practice among publishers and small business, for successful email newsletters: (more…)