In October 2005, Forum One conducted a survey of online community professionals regarding current best practices around e-mail newsletters. We are now making the results public (six months after sharing with participants). Key findings include:

• Groups continue to wrestle with consequential e-mail newsletter challenges;
• HTML has become a dominant format – only 13% of groups send text-only e-mail newsletters;
• The technologies involving e-mail newsletters remain surprisingly diverse. A large percentage of groups continue to build their own solutions;
• Most groups track “open” and “clickthrough” metrics. Few track additional metrics which tie newsletter performance to business goals;
• Many groups are obviously spending a great deal of effort to avoid spam filters. They employ many different tactics, including extensive testing before each mailing;
• Groups have many useful suggestions for improved open rates and overall performance of newsletters.

The full 18 page report can be downloaded here.