Are you sending  a newsletter to your list? If so then you need to make sure it is being read and not being sent straight to the trash bin. Here are 5 tips to make sure your emails are read and not marked as spam.

Let’s face it. For many of us, writing a newsletter is both a labor and a love. We love to share our ideas and helpful tips with our readers, but the act of writing the newsletter and deciding exactly what to write about each week is highly labor-intensive. When you put that much of yourself into your newsletter, you want to know that your readers are loving it!

The following is a list of what I consider to be the most important items that should be included in your newsletters. Let me say up front that I am not yet doing each of these things myself. But they are items that I endeavor to. Over the next few months, I plan to incorporate each of these into my newsletter.

A Compelling Subject Line
Without a compelling subject line, your email will never be opened and never be read. All of the effort you put into pouring yourself into this magnificent gem of a newsletter will be for naught if your readers don’t never read it! You could be writing the next classical masterpiece that will forever go down in history as the greatest written piece of work in your industry, but if nobody reads your email, it will never be discovered.

Consistent Frequency
I am a walking billboard for this "must-have" feature of your newsletter. In 2011, I think I sent all of two or three email newsletters, and the results weren’t pretty. When I started to send my newsletter consistently just last month, I lost a lot of subscribers.

Your newsletter schedule must be consistent, and your readers should know when to expect your newsletter.

Format
Do you have a nice, clean template that you use, consistently, each and every time? Your template should reflect your branding, but most importantly, it should organize your material cleanly and with minimal fuss. The more you can do without graphics, the better, because not all of your readers will have images enabled in their email programs due to the possibility of nefarious viruses being transmitted through images.

Content
Content is king, it reigns supreme over your newsletter as much as it does your website or blog. Really, when boiled right down, there are only two pieces of content that are must-haves to keep you readers coming back again and again…

• A personal note from you —
  We all like to feel connected to one another, and a personal note at the very beginning of your newsletters is a fantastic way to share parts of your life, be conversational, and be authentically real.
• A main content piece, e.g., an article —
  You don’t have to make a super long newsletter. In fact, shorter is better because we all have limited time these days. So give your readers a tasty little nugget that is easily digestible.

Manage Your Subscription
Federal law requires that you provide your readers with the opportunity to opt-out or manage their subscription. I’ve found that nearly all of the newsletters I subscribe to do, indeed, have the ability to opt-out. Unfortunately, I receive a few newsletters that do not, and because of this, I have set up an email inbox filter that immediately sends them to my trash bin. There have been times when I’ve opted out of a newsletter subscription only to resume my subscription again at a later time. But I can say, without a doubt, that I will never read the emails that I have filtered into the trash because they do not respect me or the laws that are intended to protect me.

You don’t want your readers to send your newsletters straight to their trash bin, or worse, for them to complain to your autoresponder provider that your emails are spam because you haven’t given them an opportunity to unsubscribe of their own free will.

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Kasey Traeger, The Lady Tech Tamer, is the owner of Web Tech Tamers and your go-to resource for all things web-techy. To receive her free tech tips and web "strategery" info, visit her blog at LadyTechTamer.com.