Those pesky split infinitives!

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Did you ever learn that you shouldn’t “split infinitives”? You probably know that it means to insert an adverb or adverbial phrase between “to” and a verb. The proponents of “no split infinitives” don’t like Star Trek’s mission “to boldly go where no one has gone before.” However, apparently, no such rule exists, according to many experts.

Grammarly says, “It’s generally preferable to place an adverb as close as possible to the verb it is modifying.” Also, it says, “Sometimes, even when a sentence could be rewritten to avoid splitting an infinitive without its meaning being obscured, the result sounds awkward, unnatural, or like the emphasis is in the wrong place.” Moreover, it says that split infinitives can make the meaning easier to understand and improve the rhythm or emphasis of the sentence.

Despite the popularity of the no-split-infinitives rule, Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty says she has never found a grammar book that insists on the rule. Grammarly agrees that “Most usage experts today agree that there is no grammatical objection to the split infinitive and that there are quite a few circumstances in which splitting an infinitive can be preferable to leaving it intact.”

Grammar Girl adds, “The only logical reason to avoid splitting infinitives is that there are still a lot of people who mistakenly think it is wrong.” For example, if your boss insists on no split infinitives, I think that’s a fight not worth having.

So Star Trek can continue “to boldly go.”

Visual design vocabulary

As a writer, I typically don’t deal with visual design issues for content or systems. Design vocabulary is like a foreign language to me. So I was delighted to discover the Nielsen Norman Group’s visual design glossary.

Some of the words—like infographic—are familiar to me. Others—like skeuomorphism—are not. And, to be honest, I had to click on the related, more detailed link about skeuomorphism to understand what it’s about. But the NNG glossary still seems like a good starting point to uncover the mysteries of visual design lingo.

Public health updates

I’ve become interested in public health since the start of the pandemic. I recently started subscribing to the free version of the informative newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist. You might enjoy it too.

How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read

Want to write better investment commentary? The recorded version of my webinar How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read is for sale on my website. Writing about topics that will interest your clients—and packaging them in a reader-friendly way—will boost your return on investment. You’ll attract more readers and deepen your relationships with clients, prospects, and referral sources who’ll become more likely to share your commentary with others.

 

Have a great summer! Happy Independence Day to all of my American readers!

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

JUNE NEWSLETTER: Coping with generative AI in articles

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Protect your publication against AI-generated text

You need a policy on text created using generative artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT, if you’re publishing a blog, newsletter, or other communication using articles that you haven’t personally written.

Here’s my policy.

To protect against allegations of plagiarism and copyright infringement, we have a policy on the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in preparing articles.

  • The writer agrees that all of their work is originally produced and not the product of any AI program, bot, or application.
  • Generative AI (such as ChatGPT) may not be used to write stories submitted to us unless the generative AI tool’s use is disclosed and the point of the text is to discuss the use of generative AI.
  • Generative AI may not be used to create images for use in stories submitted to us.
  • Any use of generative AI must be disclosed.

Forcing AI-generated text to sound more natural

If you must use AI-generated text, please try to make it sound more natural.

One way to do that is to rewrite it yourself. If that’s not an option, consider the tips in “ChatGPT and Tone: Avoid Sounding Like a Robot” on the Nielsen Norman Group blog.

Author Taylor Dykes’ advice:

Including several tone words or an example in the prompt, as well as asking for multiple alternatives, are more likely to produce satisfactory output from AI.

Dykes concludes, “Human brains are still the best tools in the content writer’s tool kit, and they should always look over ChatGPT-generated work.”

AI-generated headshot photos

I was surprised to learn in a neighborhood Facebook group about an AI-driven website that will generate “professional headshots” from selfies or other photos that you provide. Check it out at secta.ai.

You should also read one user’s objections to the overly prettified results from the AI tool.

Help your downsizing clients create their legacy

Decluttering to downsize might be challenging some of your clients. It’s partly a matter of how many decisions have to be made. After all, a mere one-inch stack of photos holds 100 pictures, according to a presentation I recently attended by Matt Paxton, host of the PBS program Legacy List. Another challenge is the emotions tied to the people and memories associated with one’s possessions.

I summarized some of Paxton’s tips in “Help your downsizing clients create their legacy.”

Brown rice salad recipe

I enjoyed this brown rice salad, which I made with leftovers. I didn’t have most of the vegetables that the recipe called for, but I substituted others.

Thank you, engaged readers!

I am grateful for the engaged readers who supported my newsletter during the many years that I circulated it via Constant Contact. So I asked those identified by Constant Contact as “engaged” if they’d like to receive a brief email notification once this newsletter is published on my blog. I was very touched by the many requests and lovely notes that I received in response. Thank you! (And a special thanks to Warren!)

Please email me if you’d like to join the list.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

May newsletter: Better quarterly commentary

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Want to do a better job on your next quarterly commentary?

You’ve finished your first-quarter commentary, but you have a nagging feeling you could have done a better job editing it. Check out the five-step process in my blog post on “5 steps for rewriting your investment commentary”!

Also, if you’re writing for an audience of individual investors, pay attention to my list of “Words to avoid in your investment communications with regular folks.”

You might also enjoy “Investment commentary numbers: How to get them right.”

For a handy overview of my approach to investment commentary, you can buy my mini e-book.

Is that really a word?

I sometimes ask my clients to substitute a different word when they use a word that’s not in the dictionary. However, if you think that we ought to be more flexible about counting words as “real,” you’ll enjoy “What makes a word ‘real’?” a TED talk. I think she has a point when she says that usage should eventually affect correctness.

I admit that I’m one of those people the speaker discusses who complains about the incorrect use of the verb “impact.” See the MLA Style Center on “Impact as a verb” for an explanation. Also, see “affect/effect/impact.”

Pursue diversity for better investment results!

The CFA Institute attracted close to 800 registrants to its March 2024 conference, “Thrive: Enhancing Outcomes through Collective Intelligence,” which made a business case for why the organization and many of its leading members are committed to pursuing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Below are some ideas that interested me.

British neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow talked about how you can use “groups of brains” to balance out biases if the group is truly diverse in genes, experience, and age. You must also ensure that the diverse group can communicate freely so don’t get an echo chamber. To achieve that, she suggested techniques such as letting the junior person speak first (which I would find intimidating if I were on the spot like that) and letting people submit ideas anonymously.

It’s hard to prove the benefits of diverse teams for investment performance through a scientifically rigorous study. That’s because, as Wylie Tollette, head of client investment solutions at Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Services, said, that would take 30 years and a double-blind study, but no one would want to be in the control group.

Daryn Dodson, managing director of Illumen Capital, shared the startling finding that as black fund managers outperform, they face more bias and misallocation. I believe he was referring to this study: “Race influences professional investors’ financial judgments,” which he coauthored. Here’s an excerpt from the summary:

Asset allocators favored the White-led, racially homogenous team when credentials were stronger, but the Black-led, racially diverse team when credentials were weaker. Moreover, asset allocators’ judgments of the team’s competence were more strongly correlated with predictions about future performance (e.g., money raised) for racially homogenous teams than for racially diverse teams. Despite the apparent preference for racially diverse teams at weaker performance levels, asset allocators did not express a high likelihood of investing in these teams. These results suggest first that underrepresentation of people of color in the realm of investing is not only a pipeline problem, and second, that funds led by people of color might paradoxically face the most barriers to advancement after they have established themselves as strong performers.

The conference was the first DEI-focused event I’ve attended to feature an Indigenous presenter, Geordie Hungerford, CFA, CEO of the First Nations Financial Management Board, who spoke on “Reshaping the Inclusion of Indigenous Communities in Investment.” He said that Indigenous people make up only 6% of the world’s population but are stewards of about 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. I thought about that when I read a Boston Globe article about an art exhibit that:

…asks you to imagine that “the future is Indigenous,” drawing on the collective knowledge of native peoples all over the world who managed their respective ecosystems very nicely before industrial-minded colonials came along and ruined everything. Or in its own words: “A Western lifestyle that relies on extraction and pollution has disconnected most of the global population from the rhythms and systems of the earth.”

Bookmark my blog, and visit it on the first Tuesday of every month!

If you’d like to keep up with my newsletter, please bookmark my blog and visit it on the first Tuesday of every month.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

April Newsletter: This is where you’ll find my newsletter from now on!

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Starting in May, this newsletter will be published on the first Tuesday of the month here instead of arriving in your email inbox via Constant Contact. I’ll also share it via social media.

Set a calendar reminder for the first Tuesday of every month, and follow me on LinkedIn to increase the likelihood that you’ll see the newsletter.

Thank you for being a loyal reader and for understanding my decision to migrate the newsletter here!

Once you define an abbreviation, should you skip the spelled-out term?

Once you’ve introduced GDP as the abbreviation for gross domestic product, should you only use GDP in your articles or other publications? Yes, you should. At least that’s the opinion of most of the writers with whom I checked.

I also lean toward defining an abbreviation once and then using only the abbreviation. However, in a long piece, I could see redefining the abbreviation after a big gap in its use. How long is a long piece? As soon as the reader can’t find an abbreviation on the same page, you might make a case for reintroducing the complete term. However, this depends on the frequency with which the term is used. It’s easier to remember a term that’s used often.

A writer friend suggested that you can remind readers of the full word or expression by spelling it out in headings. That’s a judgment call.

However, if the complete term is used in a quotation, don’t abbreviate it when you use the quotation in your article.

Whatever you decide about this issue, your organization should consider adding your preferred practices to a style guide to ensure consistency. Also, if you use many abbreviations, you may find it useful to “Help your readers by linking to definitions,” as I discuss on my blog.

Tool helps you distinguish between seemingly similar words

Check out the WikiDiff website if you want to compare the definitions of two words that seem similar.

For example, go to the site to compare different and diffident. The two words sound similar, but their meanings are unrelated. Sure, you could Google the two words separately, but it’s handy to compare the definitions on one page.

The future of investment management

“Building a Future-Ready Investment Firm” is the focus of a research study released earlier this year by research partners including Deloitte. It touches on topics such as “How Digital Technology and AI Will Change Wealth Management.”

Your cooking and your microbiome

I was interested to learn that “Cooking dramatically increased the calories humans and mice got from food. Cooked meat yielded 10 to 15 percent more calories than raw. Cooked sweet potatoes were a whopping 30 percent more caloric than uncooked ones.” This is according to “You Are What (Your Microbes) Eat” in Harvard Magazine.

Speaking of cooking sweet potatoes, I enjoyed this sweet potato recipe using miso.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

March Newsletter: Comma or colon before a quotation?

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I instinctively choose between a comma and a colon before a quotation. But I wondered if there was a rule that I should know about.

I was happy to discover Grammar Monster’s “Comma or Colon before a Quotation?” The blog post features an easy-to-follow flow chart for picking a comma or a colon. The key is deciding whether what precedes the quotation is an independent clause (in other words, could it be a standalone sentence?).

Write a great “about” page

“The 7 Questions Your ‘About’ Page Should Answer” by Andy Crestodina was highly recommended by my friend, the extraordinary copywriter Robyn Bradley, so I had to check it out. It features a nice template and practical tips.

I was interested to learn that Crestodina thinks conflict is an essential element of a good “about” page on your website. His explanation makes sense, but I’d never thought of the topic that way until I read his article.

Discounted paperbacks of Financial Bloggingbook cover: Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients

Buy a paperback copy of Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients for only $39 (regular price is $49) while the supply lasts. This offer is only for shipment within the U.S. Simply email me with your mailing address, pay the invoice I’ll email you, and I’ll send your book via priority mail.

I’m happy to sign the title page of your book. Just tell me to whom to inscribe it and what you’d like me to write.

Why there’s no apostrophe in writers room

My post on “Why there’s no apostrophe in writers room” inspired a piece of fan mail to me recently. Honestly, this topic continues to confuse me, so I circle back to this post occasionally.

As I proofread this newsletter, my software tells me that I need an apostrophe in “writers room.” This is an example of why you can’t rely solely on automated grammar and spelling checks.

Reminder: April will be my last month on Constant Contact

April will be the last month that I’ll email this newsletter to you via Constant Contact. After that, you’ll find it here on my blog. Visit my blog monthly and follow me on LinkedIn to ensure you keep up with the newsletter.

How AI affects evaluating student performance

With generative AI making it easier for everyone to write exam answers and essays, the role of written communications will become less important in academia, according to “AI in the Academy: Cautious embrace of a new technology” in Harvard Magazine. As a result, “The role of oral, live, public speaking assignments is going to increase,” says Professor Jeffrey Schnapp.

I wonder if this will also affect how companies interview writers and editors before hiring them. However, I think the best way to assess editorial skill is with a paid assignment. Even before AI, readers never really knew if a published article or editing sample was solely the work of one individual.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

February newsletter: Do grammar errors affect your heart rate?

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Have you ever felt as if your heart skipped a beat upon noticing a grammar error? It’s not just your imagination that bad grammar can affect your heart rate.

When people spot grammar errors, their heart rate variability declines, indicating that they’re stressed. That’s according to a University of Birmingham research study reported on in “Grammar Goofs Make Your Heart Skip: The Stressful Beat of Misused Language” in Neuroscience News.

Flash sale on Financial Blogging

I plan to run a flash sale on the PDF version of my book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients. Watch your email for details in the week of Feb. 19!

Here’s what advisors say about my book.

  • A great read for advisors who want to blog better—or learn how to start!
    Michael Kitces, Nerd’s Eye View
  • Susan’s words have helped me hone my message and become clearer in my explanations. Through my dedication to blogging, my business has grown as a result. I owe much of my success in business to Susan’s teaching and guidance.
    Dave Grant, Finance for Teachers
  • I wish I had read Susan’s Financial Blogging before I produced 300 weekly posts. There was a lot of practical advice in a slim 13- page guide to producing effective blogs. The blog preparation work sheets should be of particular value to an author who wishes to get smart people to do smart things with their money. My posts will be better for having read the book.
    A. Michael Lipper, Mike Lipper’s blog

Format your content effectively!

The Nielsen Norman Group highlights five techniques you can use to format your content effectively in “5 Formatting Techniques for Long-Form Content”:

  • Summary of key points
  • Text boxes, also known as callouts
  • Bullet points
  • Visual exhibits
  • Highlighting key points

These techniques help to break your content into easily digestible, visually appealing chunks of information.

Inflation calculator

Wondering how much overall U.S. inflation has increased over a specific period? Use the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator.

Shake up your brain!

My approach to using ChatGPT to explain a complex idea is the focus of “Jan. Metaphor Minute: Shake Up Your Brain” by Anne Miller. I was impressed by Anne’s analysis of what came to me instinctively.

This newsletter is moving from Constant Contact

I plan to migrate this newsletter from Constant Contact to my blog—where you are reading it now—and possibly LinkedIn by April 2024, so please bookmark my Investment Writing blog and follow me on LinkedIn. You’ll have fewer messages in your email inbox, and I’ll have fewer platforms to manage because of the change.

Thanks for your understanding!

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

Are quarterly newsletters still useful?

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This blog post was inspired by “Has the quarterly client newsletter become old news?” (free registration required) in InvestmentNews. Advisors’ opinions are mixed, says the article. So are mine. Quarterly newsletters are good for some people, but not for others.

Drawbacks of quarterly newsletters

  1. Quarterly newsletters can feel like a burden on the firm. If the employee writing it isn’t a professional writer, and has many other quarterly responsibilities, it’s hard for that person to make time to write a newsletter. The newsletter will feel like a drain. Also, if the writer isn’t enthusiastic or isn’t a good writer, the quality of the newsletter will suffer. Bad writing does not help to attract or retain clients. And overloading your financial professionals by adding writing duties may hurt your business.
  2. Canned or poorly written newsletters aren’t compelling. As the InvestmentNews article explained, in an opinion attributed to Josh Brown of Ritholz Investment Management, “newsletters often amount to more noise in a world where investors are already trying to navigate information overload.” This is especially likely for newsletters that are “canned,” meaning purchased from third-party providers and used as is. It’s also true of poorly written content, which is more likely to be written internally.

Pluses of quarterly newsletters

  1. It’s another way to “touch” your audience. Marketers say that it takes many “touches”—meetings, phone calls, and written and other communications—to make a sale. A newsletter is an easy way to touch many people at once. If your list consists of individuals who have opted in to your list, they’ve self-selected as prospects or users of your services.
  2. It allows you to express your personality and opinions. Your newsletter can stand out from the crowd when it shows off your personality or—at a larger firm—the culture of your firm. I’ve written about this in a two-part article called “How to add personality and warmth to your financial writing” and in an infographic.

Your opinions also matter. Your clients want to know how you think as you help them with financial decisions. You can also express opinions by reacting and commenting on the opinions of others. Lisa Kirschenbauer says in the InvestmentNews article, “there’s a lot of information out there, but [clients] don’t even know where to start, so we help them understand what information they should trust.” I’ve described how to do this in “Financial blogging tip: opinion + summary.”

  1. You can offload some of the work without sacrificing your originality or quality. Instead of buying generic third-party content, or sharing inexpertly content written in-house, you can get the best of both worlds. The least expensive way is to draft your newsletter yourself, and then have a professional editor clean it up. Another option is to have a professional writer interview you and then create your newsletter.

What’s YOUR approach?

Please answer my two-question survey about whether you send a quarterly newsletter. I’ll report back later.

Pick your e-newsletter sender name carefully

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Recently, I sent the newsletter of a person whom I like to my email’s spam folder. My gut reaction proves that you should clearly identify the sender of your email newsletter.

Unrecognizable sender name spells trouble

When I looked at the newsletter, I thought, “I don’t know this person. Why is he sending this to me?” I also had a vague sense that I’d received multiple issues of this unwanted newsletter.

When I receive newsletters from people whose names I don’t recognize, I’m afraid to click their “unsubscribe” links. I’m concerned that my confirming the existence of my email, I’m sentencing myself to receive more newsletter spam. That’s why I sent this person’s email to my spam folder.

The sender used only his first name in his “from” line. It’s as if I identified myself simply as “Susan” instead of “Susan Weiner, CFA” in the from line of my e-newsletter. I had no idea who he was—at least, not initially. But the name nagged at me. Eventually, I realized from the person’s mailing address that I did know him. But, by then it was too late for me to undo his spam designation.

As Campaign Monitor says in “Why ‘From’ names and email addresses are important,“

Studies on email open rates have found that trusting the sender is the single most important factor in whether an email is opened or not. That means it’s critical to choose an effective and consistent “From” name and email address.

A better approach to your sender name

If you’re a solopreneur sending an e-newsletter, consider using your full name—first name plus surname—as your sender name. In the example I give above, I would have recognized the full name. I wouldn’t have sent the newsletter to spam.

Sometimes a full name isn’t enough to jog my memory. Even adding a company name to your sender name often isn’t enough. “10 Tips to Optimize Your Newsletter’s Sender Address” by Newsletter2go offers some tips on picking the right sender name. I don’t believe that you should always use your company name as your sender name, as I discussed in “Should my firm insert its name at the start of every email subject line? ”

The best way to avoid getting sent to spam for an unrecognized sender name is to stop adding people to your email lists without their permission.

It also helps to deliver value in every newsletter. However, everyone defines value differently, so that’s hard to do consistently.

The e-newsletter problem you don’t know about

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Don’t get me wrong. Sending an e-newsletter is a great idea. I’ve gained thousands of dollars of business from my subscribers. But there’s an e-newsletter problem nobody tells you about.

The problem? Delivery.

Your newsletters may fail to reach your subscribers’ in-boxes for reasons that have little to nothing to do with you. You can avoid some, but not all of these problems, by using a provider of e-newsletter services—like Constant Contact, MailChimp, or aWeber—instead of sending your newsletter via your email client, as I discussed in “Do NOT send your newsletter via your email.” But you’ll experience problems even with those providers.

Bounce list reveals problem

You may think that all of your newsletters are reaching your subscribers. But they’re not. For one thing, some subscribers divert your newsletters from their inbox using rules to divert them to other folders. An email provider like Gmail may direct your newsletters on its own initiative to a separate tab called Promotions. Also, some subscribers may forget they subscribed and mark your newsletter as spam. That’s for starters.

There’s more, which I discovered from going through my newsletter’s “bounce list,” a list of subscribers whom Constant Contact says didn’t receive my newsletters.

Every month I go through the “bounce list” for my monthly and weekly newsletters. Sometimes the bounces are temporary, as when an inbox gets overloaded while someone is out of the office. Other times, though not too often, the bounce reports are false, as I discover when I contact the bounced email addresses, and my subscribers say, “Susan, I’m getting your newsletters. I just read one.”

I think the most typical reason for bounces is that the subscriber’s company or internet service provider (ISP) blocks e-newsletters. There are ways for subscribers to request that their company of ISP allow your newsletter through. But that can be time-consuming for the subscriber.

One of my most surprising discoveries was that it can take years for an invalid email address to bounce. I only learn this when I go the person’s LinkedIn profile to contact them about a bounce, and I see they left their job long ago. Apparently, some companies don’t immediately deactivate email addresses of employees who leave. I can see keeping an email address active for one to three months. Keeping it active for one to three years, without even activating an autoresponder about the person’s departure, seems crazy to me.

What’s the fix?

There is no easy fix to this e-newsletter problem. One approach is to chip away gradually at undelivered emails by contacting subscribers on your bounce list. Ask them to update their email addresses or take other measures to ensure your newsletter reaches them. There can be a silver lining to this practice, as I discussed in “Boost your newsletter list’s power with this tip.”

Another approach is to periodically review lists of newsletter non-openers. You can then contact those who’ve been inactive for a prolonged period, asking if they’d like to unsubscribe. I’ve made a step in that direction, but I’ve found that identifying longtime inactive subscribers is a clunky, hands-on process with Constant Contact. Other providers may make it easier. For example, I believe some providers make it possible to generate a list of those who haven’t opened a newsletter for X number of months. Last time I checked, Constant Contact didn’t offer that feature.

Have YOU found a better fix to this problem? If so, I’d love to hear from you.

 

Do NOT send your newsletter via your email

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Are you thinking of starting a newsletter and sending it via your firm’s email? Stop. Sending newsletters using your firm’s email client—whether it’s Microsoft Outlook or some other program—is a bad idea. It can anger people, and handicap the delivery of your newsletter. But, don’t worry. There’s an easy solution.

An easy way to annoy newsletter recipients

I’m thinking about this because I just received a mass email from someone who’s launching a new business. This person emailed me—and maybe 20 other people—in a message that displayed our emails in the CC line.

It’s not a good idea to expose other people’s email addresses if they don’t already work at the same company or correspond via email for other purposes. People like their privacy. In the case that I’m thinking of, the other recipients were all people who had taken a class together, so many of them may have welcomed the chance to stay in touch. But some might not.

Another problem: When you send a mass email using the CC line, inevitably some people will “respond all.” That’s true even when their message is of no interest to the other recipients. This is annoying.

A way to handicap your newsletter delivery

You might think that using the BCC line to blind-copy recipients would solve your problems. Sure, it’ll solve the problems listed above. But there are other issues with sending newsletters via your firm’s email software.

Internet service providers (ISPs) are suspicious of emails that have many addressees. They fear that you might be sending spam. Your email address could get blacklisted.

As e-mail marketing application MailChimp says in its explanation of blacklists, “If your emails get marked as spam, or ISPs see a sudden increase in email volume coming from your domain, you could get blacklisted.” Campaign Monitor, another email marketing app, notes that “Just a few spam complaints can land an IP address on a blacklist, even if the ratio of complaints to the volume of email sent is very low.” 

That could hurt the delivery of your regular emails as well as your newsletters. That’s a high price to pay.

Solution: use an email marketing application

An email marketing application—I use Constant Contact—solves the problem of exposing recipient’s email addresses. It also gives your newsletter the chance to be viewed more favorably by ISPs than emails sent to many recipients via your firm’s email software.

For one thing, an email marketing app will make sure that you comply with certain standards set by the CAN-SPAM Act, an anti-spam law. It’ll force you to provide an unsubscribe link and to put your address in the email, as pointed out in “7 Reasons You Should Use An Email Marketing Service to Send Your Newsletters.” The same article asserts that “Email service providers such as Constant Contact and MailChimp are trusted within the email community and they keep a good eye on their account holders to make sure there is no funny business going on.” As Liz Lockard says in “5 Reasons Why Email Marketing Service Providers are a MUST,” “They keep a record of the opt-in when your subscriber signs up and also have things like spam filter checks to help you avoid the junk folder and being reported as spam.”

Other advantages of email marketing service providers:

  • They give you the option to automate sign-ups to your newsletter with a link in your emails, on your website, or in other locations.
  • They provide templates to help you format your newsletters attractively—and in a mobile-friendly way.
  • They usually offer some sort of support, which can be invaluable when you run into problems with your newsletter.

You may still have problems

I wish I could say that email marketing service providers are the solution to all of your problems. They’re not.

Some companies block communications sent via such providers. I’ve run into this with subscribers to my Investment Writing newsletter. Some of my subscribers end up re-subscribing from their home email addresses, rather than battling their company information technology folks to get the newsletter whitelisted.

Still, if you follow my advice, you’re likely to have fewer problems than if you send newsletters via your regular email software.