This guide follows a small Jamaican business, a family-run guest house on the south coast, from idea to first newsletter. The steps are the same whether you sell furniture in Montego Bay, run a gym in Kingston or promote a sound system across the island.
Step 1: Decide who it’s for and what it’s for
Our guest house has three groups on its mind: past guests from North America and Europe, Jamaicans living abroad who visit family at Christmas, and local customers who book the restaurant for weekend lunches. One newsletter could serve all three, but the main goal must be clear. Here, it is repeat bookings in the quieter months, so the first issue is aimed at past guests.
Step 2: Gather contacts lawfully
Under Jamaica’s Data Protection Act, 2020, you can market by email to people who consented, or to existing customers whose details you collected during a sale, as long as they were given a simple way to refuse. Past guests who booked directly and were offered an opt-out fit the second category. People who only sent an enquiry do not, so they are invited to subscribe through a subscription form instead. See permission to send email campaigns for the full rules.
Step 3: Import and organise the list
Export guest details from the booking system to a spreadsheet, clean up duplicates and obvious typos, and import them into Mailpro. Add fields for country, last stay date and source of consent, so you can segment and prove where each contact came from. Keep phone numbers in international format (+1-876 for Jamaican numbers) in case you add SMS later.
Step 4: Choose a design
Pick a template from the template library or build a layout with the drag-and-drop builder. For a hospitality business, a large photo at the top, a short welcome, one offer and a booking button is enough. Use your logo and a colour palette that matches your website.
Step 5: Write for someone reading on a phone
- A subject line that says what’s inside: “Your September escape: 3 nights for the price of 2”.
- A first paragraph of two or three sentences.
- One main button with a clear action, such as “Check dates”.
- A personal sign-off from the owner, which works well for small Jamaican businesses where guests remember the people.
Step 6: Add the essentials in the footer
Include your business name, physical address, phone number and an unsubscribe link. Jamaica’s Data Protection Act requires marketing messages to identify the sender and provide a way to request that the messages stop. If you mail US subscribers, the CAN-SPAM Act also expects a valid postal address.
Step 7: Test and schedule
Send a test to yourself and open it on at least two phones. Check every link. Then schedule the send: Jamaica does not use daylight saving time, so from March to November, 10 a.m. in Kingston is 11 a.m. in New York and 4 p.m. in London. If your list is mostly North American, a late-morning Jamaican send on a Tuesday or Wednesday is a sensible starting point, which you can then refine.
Step 8: Measure and improve
Look at the report 24 to 48 hours later: how many people opened, which links they clicked, which addresses bounced and who unsubscribed. Remove hard bounces and note which content drew clicks. The next issue can build on what worked.
Common first-newsletter mistakes
- Trying to say everything. One clear message beats five competing ones.
- Using a personal Gmail address as the sender. Send from your business domain, authenticated, so mailbox providers trust it.
- Forgetting the diaspora’s time zone and currency. Tell overseas readers whether prices are in JMD or USD.
- Importing every contact you have ever had. People who never agreed to marketing, and aren’t customers offered an opt-out, should not be on the list under Jamaica’s Data Protection Act.
- No plan for the second issue. Decide the next date before you send the first, so the newsletter becomes a habit for you and your readers.
Where the data is kept
Your guest list is personal data, and Jamaica’s Act limits transfers to countries without adequate protection. Mailpro stores data in its Swiss data centre, outside US jurisdiction, and never sells or rents it.
Want to understand the design options in more depth? Read about HTML newsletters or return to the newsletter creation overview.