The best way for you to send your email is going to depend on the results you're after and the technology you've got available.
We've looked at four of the most popular ways to send email and give you the Pro's and Con's of each.
-
Do-It-Yourself Email
The most straightforward way to send your newsletter is to send it as an email or as a document attached to your email from your own email account.
The biggest advantage of DIY is that if you've already got an email address and mail servers set up, using them to send newsletters and marketing leverages what you already have so there's no additional financial cost. You also remain firmly in control over what gets sent out and when.
The downside of DIY is that to keep yourself off SPAM registers you can only send small amounts of email at a time and can't hide email addresses using the BCC trick if you want it to achieve a high level of deliverability. On top of that there's a lot of work involved in managing the subscribe and unsubscribe requests, plus there's no way to confirm if everyone's received your message.
-
Yahoo Groups
People with Yahoo accounts can use Yahoo Groups to send newsletters for free.
Not only is it free to send your newsletters and marketing it's also free to set-up the Yahoo account.
The great things about Yahoo Groups is that you can access your account from any computer anywhere in the world. So if you're on the go a lot, this saves having to set up secure networks and remote access to get to your email account. Another advantage of using Yahoo Groups is that subscribing and unsubscribing is handled by the system so there's no work for you to do here, plus you can embed images into your email messages rather than sending them as attachments.
On the less positive side, emails being sent from Yahoo Groups are being singled out and blocked by some large Internet Service Providers (ISPs), so delivery isn't as reliable as other approaches.
If you choose to use Yahoo Groups you need to be aware that your subscribers must have a Yahoo account to receive your messages.
-
Email Service Providers
To help businesses send email marketing free from the usual ISP restrictions, hundreds of Websites have set themselves up as Email Services Providers (ESPs). What these Websites do is provide you with the ability to send huge numbers of emails all at the same time without being labeled as a SPAMMER by making sure that you send newsletters in a way that makes you legally accountable for the message.
Sounds frightening. In reality all it means is that you have a real email address to send reply emails to, you put your business details at the bottom of every email and that the format that it is sent in doesn't allow viruses, worms or other hacker nastiness.
There are huge benefits to using an ESP for sending you email newsletter. Firstly, there's no risk to any of your own computers. Most ESPs have relationships with ISPs to guarantee delivery of your messages, they also have around the clock security staff making sure their computers are secured and hackers haven't gotten into accounts. The majority of ESPs provide libraries of help in send email newsletters, provide pretty templates to make your messages look good and after you've sent your message have a report to show you how successful it was. One of the great benefits is that you can create a subscription form to put in your Website that automatically manages subscribe and unsubscribe requests.
One problems with ESPs is that there are so many out there it's difficult to know which one to use, and each one offers slightly different features. The other problem is that even though ESPs try to make their Websites easy to use, there is still a pretty steep technical learning curve with most.
-
All-inclusive Email marketing
To overcome the technical difficulties of using an ESP there is a new breed of email service providers who not only handle the technical side but will also write your newsletters and help you segment and get more information out of your email marketing.
Solutions Answers Results provides all-inclusive email marketing; doing everything from putting a subscription form on your Website to writing, sending and measuring the success of your email newsletters.
-
Some Advice on Sending Email Newsletters
20% of a customer list/database becomes useless within 12 months.
This means that if you're not paying attention to keeping your customer list fresh and regularly sending email communication you'll lose them within 5 years.
Regardless of which approach you choose...
Articles 
You've made the decision to start sending email newsletters to your prospects and customers. You know what you want to say and you've begun collecting email addresses, all that's left to work out is what's the best way to send them.