Adding temporary offers in a newsletter is not, to me, ideal. As a reader, I tend to read newsletters once every few days.
Opening a newsletter and noticing an expiring offer – that doesn’t sound so good.
Also, if you tell me, “Write to me, this is a personal message,” I do write back, and then you don’t reply – that’s not very nice.
As far as I can tell, newsletters are more difficult to read than a blog/news site via RSS.
Some people add this text: “Subscribe to my newsletter to download X.” There are two major drawbacks to this:
- You decrease the trust others have in your brand, as you do a rather shady thing as a general principle; you ask for people’s mail without them being sure they’ll be treated nicely;
- Your audience will mostly consist of people who are too lazy to unsubscribe. I wouldn’t want an audience formed mostly of these people.
Why end your newsletter with a quote? If you have a lot of links in your newsletter, some people might open them all in tabs (perhaps using an extension like Snap links for Firefox / Chrome). While they wait for the tabs to load, they could read your quote and reflect on it.
It matters a lot to have a good subject line. People focus a lot on crafting a good newsletter, but the subject line matters a lot.
