Jacada Ltd., a software infrastructure company in Atlanta, retained French-born Philippe Lang to produce a newsletter to communicate with its prospects and customers. When the company went public, he adapted the newsletter to communicate with investors as well.

Lang, a Web designer and newsletter publisher, approached the problem organically. "It’s critical to continually test and adapt, keep tracking results of each e-mail blast, and adjust content and format accordingly."

With a circulation base of 12,000, Jacada News is key to the company’s marketing support. Each plain-text e-mail offers an event such as a Web seminar, or a product like a white paper, to drive readers to the Web site. The newsletter content, a digest of company announcements and press releases, is a cinch for Lang to put together. After sending the issue, he tracks its click through rates (CTRs) on each press release and produces a report to see which one pulled best. "We continually adapt based on response," he explains.

Lang follows the same routine for HumanClick, where he serves as chief Web officer. Founded in 1999, HumanClick is an application service provider (ASP) that supplies real-time interactive chat and customer tracking capabilities to Web operators. Mailing a plain-text e-mail newsletter to the company’s more than 100,000 customers poses unique problems.

"In the beginning," says Lang, "we would e-mail the newsletter overnight. As circulation grew–and links to product upgrades were included in the newsletter–we found we could jam downloads and overload our service operators. Now, instead of flooding the system, we chunk our mailings into segments over extended time intervals."