Email newsletters: alive and well

Apparently the rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated. Four years ago in Jakob Nielsen’s first report about newsletter usability, he said the future of email newsletters was grim. More specifically, he said, “There may be none. Legitimate use of email is at war with spam, and spam may be winning.”

Now an in-depth 2007 usability study from Nielsen and company sings a different tune. They say that email newsletters are a powerful communication tool and an effective way to get the word out about a variety of topics, including your company, your industry, prices and sales, and upcoming events. Despite email and spam overload, email newsletters are alive and well.

You have to pay for Nielsen’s study, but you can peruse the executive summary free of charge. His findings, based on testing with 93 users, are an interesting read. —Julie Jares, managing editor