I cannot over emphasize the importance of having an eNewsletter as soon as you launch your site (we are working on one now for AdminBuzz.com)!

Here are some reasons why and tips:

• Builds member confidence.
• Builds member inclusion. They feel included in a "members only" atmosphere.
• Builds member retention. They are 10 times more likely to return.
• Makes it easy. Convenience. Convenience. Convenience!
• Members stay connected. They like being part of the "Community"
• Web stats will go up! This is a sure fact
  
  
  
  In this example, one of my previous sites sent out a weekly eNewsletter every Tuesday. You can see the evidence of this by the Visitor bar graph above.
  
  
  
  Now take a look at the results of the eNewsletter on a monthly basis! See the spikes every week? The first spike is from our Tuesday eNewsletters. The second was from another weekly that we sent out.
  
  This WILL occur if you publish n eNewsletter! It just depends on how big of a spike you get but you will get a spike, that for sure!
• You should automate the eNewsletter if possible and if your site content is compatible with that.
• You should create three versions of every issue.
  These are:
  • Email Version - what you send to members in their mailbox
  • Current Version - what visitors see any time they choose to view the newsletter online. The name and link to this version NEVER changes.
  • Archive Version - In fact you should have an Archive Page that lists all previous versions of the eNewsletter along with links to each archived issue.
    
    Facts:
    
    You will find that the each of the web-based versions are picked up by search engines and possibly other sites and that builds your SEO and page rank.
    
    You will notice that the Current Version page will end up with a very high page rank because everyone is always coming back to that page link.
    
    You will get high page ranks for the archive listing page also. All of these eNewsletter related pages will end up getting page ranks close to your base site page rank, likely i point below.

More to come...

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It can be VERY handy, since some people just sign up, poke around and never come back, if you have a newsletter going by email, people generally don't turn that option off so they may see something interesting and come back :3

Man I am really learning by being on this website because it never even occurred to me to make a newsletter.

Do you use a special program for doing it or do you just write a plain email?
I mean backgrounds etc.

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World War 2 History forums

In my opinion, it should be completely automated, and pick up all new content every week. Some sites even allow you to sign up to get it daily. We will write the script ourselves and use a template that matches the site theme.

Now there may be off the shelf scripts out there that work with vB to send our newsletters. You can also send out a text based newsletter manually from the vB cPanel. We will do it ourselves.

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