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Newsletters by Numbers - Stuff Every Newsletter Must Have

Written by: Simon Payn

Article Overview: A roadmap to follow if you want your customer newsletter to be as effective as can be.

Newsletters by Numbers - Stuff Every Newsletter Must Have

Content Determine Focus: The biggest mistake people make is focusing on their own needs and not their clients' and prospects' needs. Your newsletter must add value to readers' lives and it must serve their interests. Consider what is most important to your readers. What keeps them up at night? What are their dreams and desires?

Content Mix: Don't make it all about your industry. Mix it up. At least 50% should be general in nature because people aren't always in heat for what you sell.

Engagement Devices: Include ways to encourage people to contact you. I mention in the newsletters I provide, for example, a special report people can request (and is provided to members). You might like to consider writing other ones that are particularly relevant to what you do. In my newsletters, I also encourage people to contact you for answers to the puzzles and a quiz.

Personality and Thought Leadership: Most newsletters are boring, which makes them less effective. I tell people to transfer their face-to-face personality into print. Include opinions, even a rant. You'll find this is the best-read part of the newsletter. Make it about a relevant or local topic. If you have an opinion that polarizes, so much the better - just make sure it polarizes in the right direction to attract the clients you want to attract. Be a thought leader in your market, not a thought-follower. Position yourself as the go-to people.

Picture: Include a picture of yourself in the newsletter. People like working with people, not logos.



Print, Email and Distribution

Print or Email? Both have their merits, and it comes down to a question of return on investment. Print newsletters are often more effective because of their physical presence, but they cost more to print and mail. Consider doing both so you can send email as well as print, or use the medium that individual clients prefer.

Mailing: Ideally, use an envelope with a live stamp. More newsletters will get opened if you do that.

Frequency: Monthly at minimum.

Distribution: Consider distributing your newsletter to nodes in your network - people with a lot of connections.

Sending to people who don't know you: Resist the temptation to send newsletters to people you don't know - or even to people you met once at a party. Sending email newsletters in these circumstances is technically spam - it's ineffective marketing and terrible for your brand.

Collecting Leads

On all your marketing: My own version of the ABC of sales is Always Be Collecting. So always find opportunities to collect leads in your marketing materials. Indeed, don't let any marketing go out the door without a lead generation component so you can build a relationship with prospects until they are ready to buy.

Lead collection ‘bait': It's not good enough just to ask people to sign up to receive a newsletter. After all, who wants another newsletter? Instead, what they want is value - information that will make their lives better. The basic way to do it is to offer a special report (like the one I mention under engagement devices above). A financial planner might say something like: "Get my free guide: tips for smarter investing - in any economy. Just visit my website or email me and we'll send it right out to you. We'll also add you to our list to receive our newsletter, which is packed full of useful and entertaining information...."

Lead collection on your website: Put a newsletter opt-in box on every page of your website - not just the home page - because Google brings people to every page on your site. Combined with good lead generation bait and good traffic, you will be able to collect many more leads every day.

Lead nurturing

Autoresponder drip campaigns: This is a more advanced technique, but consider creating automatic autoresponder emails. For example, on my website I have a box that says "5 Days to Success with Newsletters". People get an automatic email full of useful content each day, and then every few days after...for a complete year.

Segmenting: Another advanced technique is to produce several types of lead generation bait according to the type of client you wish to attract. This helps improve the market-to-message match and also helps you identify the best leads. The same should be done for existing clients - retirees want info for retirees.

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Article Tags: biggest mistake, dreams and desires, email, follower, logos, mail, merits, other ones, personality, physical presence, prospects, puzzles, quiz, rant, return on investment, right direction, thought leader, thought leadership



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Do webinars really work? - Since I began this website I've received numerous offers to put on webinars. My concern has always been the time and effort put into creating the webinars versus written content and the ability to rank in search engines for webinats versus articles. To date I have not done a webinar from my site. I was reading Inc's Sales & Marketing section and they had an article profiling a company, LeanLogistics which tested newsletter vs. webinar marketing campaigns. The results? The newsletters yielded double the sales leads at one sixth the cost of the webinars. According to LeanLogistics it was because: - Newsletters can be emailed multiple times - Newsletters can sit in a client's inbox for many days - If a client does not visit the webinar at the appointed time they will not get the information and will not go back to it even if it is available online anytime afterwards Have any of you found success with webinars or do you prefer the traditional written content method of marketing?
aweber - At RSC Business Group Inc., we plan on using Aweber for sending out Newsletters and to use as an autoresponder to inform clients of upcoming seminars they showed interest in attending.
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