Checking your newsletter links

Many businesses resort to email newsletters to keep their potential customer base informed about new products, services, news etc.

It can be a cheap and efficient method to communicate, offering special deals to subscribers, testing marketing messages and more. The newsletter can also drive trackable traffic to the website, which gives great metrics on what products are du jour, and what messages work.

However, recently, there seems to have been a slew of newsletters (and not all issued by small companies) where the links to stories of interest lead to 404s (Page not found). This can mean that the whole newsletter fails in its purpose because your average consumer does not have time, cannot be bothered, or does not know how to reformat the link so that it is correct. Or, because your site is insufficiently optimised and spidered regularly by the search engines, they cannot find any link to the product/story/etc that they are interested in when they resort to the search engines to find a link.

A broken link can be as simple as missing out the www (tell your hosting company to reconfig their servers so it isn't even required!), typing the URL incorrectly, or when using a third party forwarding software which doesn't put in the correct link (this is usually a human typing / cut and paste error though!)

A newsletter with one bad link can be overlooked, although not if that link goes to your hot must-have product, but newsletters where multiple links are wrong will mean you have just wasted the money on sending it, and will have placed indelibly into your subscribers' minds the fact that "Oh, last time, nothing in this worked, I can't be bothered to try again".

The search engine optimisation strategy employed by your company should be ongoing. Your site needs to be regularly updated, with current news, new products, blog posts etc and you need to make sure that the search engine spiders are visiting regularly. Check your traffic stats to make sure they are!

In times of economic difficulties, every penny you spend must work for you. Sending out a test newsletter and paying an employee for a few minutes time to check every link, or do it yourself, can mean the difference between achieving the results you expected from your newsletter eg sales, eyeballs on your website, long term loyalty from customers, or throwing money down the drain, and not just in the short-term.

Check your links work! Check your site works before sending the newsletter. Optimise your site properly. And test, test and test again!