At one level, there isn’t one. Both are email documents. We usually define it as a difference in format and function.

Email Campaigns use good old fashioned email format. You might include generalized links, a couple of pictures or even attach a document. These days, email campaigns are generally considered “quaint”, at best. You might be operating off a system designed to manage users and subscriptions – or you might be sending out to a list from your contacts in Outlook with the addresses undisclosed.

Newletters generally use a system dedicated to managing users and put your content into a candywrapper – a template. In this case, you’re generating HTML based email meaning you’re creating, in one sense, a web page and throwing it at your user list.

It comes down to primarily two methods – build ‘em or buy ‘em.

Let’s deal with buying first. Here, you’ve got to be careful – very, very careful. A number of purveyors are the equivalent of the guy in cartoons selling watches from inside his coat at discount prices. The lists are either ill-gottenly gotten or filled with bogus addresses; in exceptional cases, you’ve got a nice big helping of both.

Building a list is the way to go. And the way to do that is to integrate address pickup directly into your site and then drive visitors to conversion. Our favored method is to place the newletter pickup directly and prominently into the template proper, so it’s on every page. And to make sure people know they have to confirm to subscribe, which instills a better level of confidence.

You can – but you’re not going to get the results you want. The major browser-based systems [think gMail & Hotmail] strip the formatting out if you don’t build them exactly right, which can be both a bit demanding and maddening. At Liquid Anvil, we’ve built a largish number of templates that we’ve tested against those systems – and we test any new newsletter, even if we’ve used the template before, preparatory to sending it out. We also make certain the information for users to unsubscribe to emails is in place and functioning.

Nope. Not all email browsers are created equal. Generally, on purpose.

The major browsers – Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail and the web based programs – are all HTML equipped, true enough. But a user can and more often than you think, does, turn off that functionality. Or a user may just decide not to reveal imagery, a common practice to defeat spammers discovering legitimate addresses.

This is why you have to make sure that with your newsletter you include raw source information as well as HTML and imagery, so that in either case at least some of your message gets through.

We’ve used a variety of systems over the long, long years. Most of the major Content Management Systems have either integrated systems [we’re particular fans of the system built into Business Catalyst, for a variety of reasons] or modules that can be plugged in to add that functionality.

There are a number of Open Source systems out there that do a bang up job, as well. Of late, we’ve been using poMMo a great deal for a couple of different clients.

And then there are the paid systems like MailChimp and Constant Contact. The upside there is you get professionally managed systems and have access to prebuilt templates if you want it. The downside, of course, is that you have to pay in order to really abuse them. [Same’s true of Catalyst, just in the interest of full disclosure.] Most of the paid systems have about the same price point, so it becomes a matter of what suits you best. We can help you make that determination.

Spam is generally defined as “any email you didn’t ask for” and “really friggin’ annoying” in this case. Estimates place between 90% – 95% of all email traffic in North America as spam last year.

That’s a whole lot of processed pork products.

The hassle is that if you send out to your contact list – not to people who have stated succinctly that they do indeed want your email newsletter – you’ve just joined the ranks, and you can be punished by law.

People tend to get a bit tetchy if you nuke their inbox. Trying to find the guy who sent out 30,000,000 messages off cracked mail servers and is hiding in the bush in the former Soviet republics is a pain in the gluteal regions; you, on the other hand, are emminently reachable. And if you’re reading this, you’re likely living in the society that has over 50% of the world’s practicing attorneys.