Saturday, July 21, 2012

Managing an Effective Newsletter

Truth be known, most newsletters (print or online) do not get the proper return on investment they should or could. Why?

For some unexplained reason the publisher doesn’t have a long term goal for its success. Never lose sight that a newsletter has one purpose; increase sales and/or prospect traffic. Period!

My first rule of thumb is ‘”don’t tell everyone where you’ve been” but “where you are going” and “how you are going to get their.... together.” The example I have attached is produced bi-annually for the purpose of fundraising. It is well thought out and always an enjoyable and informative read.

Make sure the subjects you promote have relevance and fit into your overall marketing plan. For example if you want to increase your sale of widgets, don’t include multiple recipes in your publication.

Never leave your readers asking “why am I wasting my time reading this?” All of your readers are busy so always be respectful of the time you are asking them to spend. Be realistic about the amount of content you can consistently produce and remember how the newsletter reads is just as important as how it looks.

Point blank - a newsletter must be sustainable. If you're doing an electronic version of your newsletter, 'clean and simple' spells 'effective'. Plain text publication with less graphic enhancements will help keep file sizes manageable for the mail servers.