I think it sounds like you are on the right track @sheridanmills  I think the other things you need to decide is how often you are going to send e-mails, what is the content of those e-mails, are they sent on the same day, (and probably a million other questions) 

For getting a bunch of Likes from your newsletter,  I think having a singe topic e-mail about your social sites can help convert some of your connections to fans so that they see your content and news in a couple places.  But it sounds like if you are just starting your e-mail list, you may not have a lot of subscribers already.  Hope that helps!

@sheridanmills

Hi Sheridan

I would focus more on the text rather than the image as some people’s email clients automatically block images.

Just make sure you have all the info in text form in an easily read format.

Russ

I’ve been on 5 ESP’s and mailchimp is the best so far – i feels clunky at first because it does so much – I actually have an email send check list that I litterlly check off before each deployment.Pick one or two of their templates – you can turn portions on and off 

Be consistent and test for the optimal send time/day. We have great luck with Sunday mornings – people read their email when they get up and in the evening before the week starts. 
We do a LOT of images and deliverability is very high – it’s also easy to embed a “Like” button
People tend to open more with an embedded video – we always offer at least one video in every email – just for S&G we added a flippant music video last week, mildy related to the subject and people loved it
Don’t forget at least one clear call to action otherwise you’re spinning your wheels
here’s some info that may help you - http://mailchimp.com/resources/research/

I’m an HTML hack but here’s our emails – feel free to reach out – I “borrowed” the little menu bar at the bottom - http://goo.gl/K4ZN8 We’ve been emailing for 7 years but the list on the link is since we began mailchimp. Because most of our emails are original content, I copy and paste all the email’s HTML into our blog

@sheridanmills MC also have a drag and drop template creator now as well. Super easy and looks great!

Russ

@justinthompson @russellallert

Thanks guys, am in the middle or trailing and early stages yet so see how I go.

Am going to try and balance the email with a short and succinct text/copy section at the top and then one flyer image and our logo at the bottom.

Not sure how to integrate social media buttons at the moment but have just gone with the basic template for now and put text links (hyperlinked them) in the footer for now.

@russellallert

No probs, don’t realy know what the drag and drop thing is just yet (other than the obvious) but will investigate. 

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