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Keeping your business in the front of your customers mind is a great benefit of email newsletters. Whereas websites rely on your customers remembering to visit you (or being savvy enough to use RSS), email reaches out directly to people.

That means you need to be very careful in not abusing that privilege, but it also means you have a fantastic opportunity to keep in touch during the weeks, months or years that your customers spend in between needing your products or services.

One of the challenges for web designers sending email for themselves, and for their clients, has always been "how do I make sure that we actually keep sending these emails"?

Sending regularly makes a big difference - it helps people be more comfortable because they know what to expect, and it reduces the risk of them forgetting they signed up, and marking your email as junk. If your clients send regularly, it also means more income for your business!

So why do so many people struggle (even including ourselves with our Campaign Monitor newsletter!) with sending regularly? Reasons we have experienced, and heard from others include forgetting when busy, not knowing what to write about, and being unsure who is actually going to do it.

Setting up a few simple practices can resolve these problems, and this is something you could easily be doing for your clients.

3 steps to regular email newsletters

1. Create a publishing calendar
   If you give yourself or your clients hard deadlines for when each issue should go out, it is much easier to plan the work in. Pick a realistic frequency, whether that's weekly, monthly or whatever, and add recurring tasks to the calendar.

   Don't forget to add in special notes for emails close to major events like Easter, Christmas or relevant times like school holidays as appropriate for each client.

2. Appoint an owner for the newsletter
   Make sure a single person knows that it is their job to make sure each issue goes out on time. They can solicit content and help from others, but it is their job to get everything ready to go.

   It's just too easy to think 'someone else will do it' when a group of people are all responsible.

3. Keep an ideas file
   Don't you hate staring at a blank page wondering how to fill it? Avoid that pain by keeping an ideas file in a shared location, where you, your client and their team can record ideas and information.

   When the newsletter owner comes to put together an issue, they can go through the file and slot items in. Other content sources could include blog posts, customer feedback and industry news that occurs between issues.

By creating some lightweight structure, you can remove a lot of the barriers to regular email newsletters, and create consistent, effective publishing. We'd also love to hear how you do it, and whether this is a problem for your clients too. Leave us a comment!