Web and newsletter tools: Free/cheap and DIY

[Lee Wright]

Nice to see everyone this evening. Thanks to Joanne and Heather for organizing.

One of the topics that seemed to be of particular interest was tools we've used to implement our various web sites.

We've posted the tools we use here.

There you'll find information on these hosted services: Document hosting and streaming (free), photo browsing for photos hosted on Flickr (both free), newsletter service (free for non-profits), event registration (free for free events), and detailed site visitor stats and tracking (free).

Are there resources you use that you'd like to share?

[Heather Cole]

Thanks for posting the link, Lee.

[Karol Bartlett]

Lee, I was missed the event due to being sick - bummer! I am very interested in the topics you are working with and also thankful for the links on your site! Just a question - when you were looking for e-newsletter - did you check into the Constant Contact (http://search.constantcontact.com/index.jsp) at all? I work for a public library and we have been doing an in-house newsletter for way to long. Now with budget cuts we are looking to save money on the paper issue and going with an e newsletter. Any thoughts you want to throw my way would be great! Thanks for your time!
Karol

[Lee Wright]

Glad you found this information useful, Karol.

Yes, we did look at ConstantContact, and it was more than we wanted to spend. Vertical Response's price of free for non-profits was something we could afford.

Ideas regardless of who you use:

- Add an e-mail sign up box to every major page on your site.
- Make sign up simple. Depending on the pricing of the service you use, you may find that it doesn't make sense to ask people for anything other than their e-mail address. The first inclination may be to ask profiling information, but doing so will cause a certain percentage of people to abandon the sign up. If you do consider adding questions, ask yourself, "What am I going to do differently once I have that data?" My guess is that you wouldn't customize your newsletter based on subscriber characteristics and wouldn't send personalized newsletters.
- Ask for e-mail addresses on your materials and promote your site and newsletter in all materials.
- Don't send a PDF, but rather a text version and an HTML version.
- Keep the HTML version "lightweight" so it loads fast.
- Include all of the useful information in the newsletter so that people don't have to click through to make the newsletter useful.
- Archive the newsletter on your site.
- Let people know that you're making the move, and offer paper newsletters on a "subscription" basis. In other words, an e-mail newsletter is free; if you want me to print it out and mail it to you, the cost is $x.

Good luck with your efforts--

Lee

[Rachael Binning]

A few of my colleagues have been working really hard on a great web 2.0 resource for small museums, historical societies, and cultural centers. The project is called The Public Humanities Toolbox and can be found at: http://publichumanitiestoolbox.wordpress.com/. A print resource/handbook can be found at: http://publichumanitiestoolbox.wordpress.com/workshop-materials/.

Presentations about this project will take place at NCPH and at the Massachusetts History Conference on June 8th.

In light of our great meeting last week, I think that this will be very helpful for many of the people and organizations that attended.