New Year. New Resolutions. While you are working on trimming your figure, and increasing the quality time with family, also consider making changes to your company e-newsletters. This time next year you will be reaping the rewards.
If you’re already an e-news master, then skip this article and get back to work. Otherwise, let’s keep rolling…
More often than not, small and medium-sized business have very good intentions for sending out regular newsletters, whether on email or in print. But intentions don’t always become reality.
Often, a business owner or manager will send out their first newsletter on the 1st of the month. She notes her calendar for the following month, plans to send the next issue, and then sets it all aside. The good worker that she is, she actually sends out the 2nd newsletter the following month. And maybe a 3rd.
Then usually around newsletter #4, somehow magically the newsletter manager is too busy to send it out. It doesn’t get done on time. She thinks, “Well, I had a big project to finish instead, and that’s good. I will just send the newsletter out a couple of weeks late.”
A couple of weeks later she thinks, “You know, it would look funny if I send it out two weeks late. I will just wait until the first of the month.”
It’s the first of the month and she’s busy again. It doesn’t go out. She thinks, “Maybe we should send a QUARTERLY newsletter instead….”
And so it goes. We see it all the time.
YOUR NEWSLETTER IS VALUABLE!
- If you are sending quality, valuable content to your customers and prospects, then they actually appreciate your newsletter, they enjoy it, and they may even look forward to it! If you’re not sending it out, you are depriving them of that happiness.
- Each time you send your newsletter, you are working to stay top-of-mind with your clients. When they see something from you (and even if they don’t open it up) they remember you, they think of you, and they know that you are alive and kicking.
- Your newsletters (especially electronic newsletters) can provide valuable data and feedback that will help to improve your business.
WHAT GETS IN THE WAY?
One of the biggest “hassles” clients share with us about “making the newsletter” is coming up with the content. People have told us that they sit down for hours upon hours, laboring over topics, slaving away at the keyboard, writing drafts, editing copy, looking for images, and so on. Not only is this completely unnecessary, but it’s what becomes the biggest reason people put it off and eventually stop sending their newsletter.
SPREAD IT OUT
To get rid of the content hurdle, break it up into smaller chunks. Rather than trying to create your giant newsletter all at once, create it over time… over the course of the month.
Each week (or more often if you like) sit down at your computer and write a blog article for your website. Write about a great customer experience. Or a problem you solved. Or maybe write about the secret benefits of using your product. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just do it. Get it done. And fix the little problems later.
After four weeks you’ve got four articles, and VOILA… there’s the content for your monthly newsletter.
CREAM OF THE CROP
If you’ve had the luxury of writing two blog entries or articles per week, you can do something really cool. Look at your website’s visitor analysis. See which articles have been most popular just from regular traffic. Grab the four big ones and VOILA… there’s your newsletter content.
SIDE NOTE: Just imagine, after one year, you’ve got anywhere from 50 to 100 new articles in your website! That’s TONS of food for Google to chew on. And that brings more visitors to your site who have searched for topics you’ve written about!
COPY AND PASTE
Now that you have your four articles from the month, simply copy and paste them into your printed newsletter. Or if you are sending e-news, copy and paste the headlines and the first two sentences of each article… followed by “read more.”
SUPER SAUCE WORKS ON HAMBURGERS, TOO
One of the best Happy Helper testimonials we’ve ever received arrived in December 2011 from Janet K. in Little Rock, Arkansas. Janet explained that her favorite ice cream topping works great on hamburgers, too! Gosh, hamburgers, of all things! We were intrigued… read more…
By using only the headline and first few sentences, we can:
- Keep the email newsletter brief. Nobody wants to open a message and see an encyclopedia staring them in the face. Nothing gets your email deleted faster.
- Track what’s interesting. Using the right services, you’ll be able to see how many of your readers were interested in the Super Sauce article enough to click “read more.”
- Create new lists. Now that you know who is interested in Secret Sauce, you can create a list of just those people, and later on market the new and improved Secret Sauce to that target group.
by Thom Hiatt