Truth 41. E-letters focus marketing and reinforce branding

Print newsletters are generally complex, time-consuming, and expensive to produce, but the e-revolution makes it relatively easy to create and deliver e-newsletters.

Effective e-newsletters can run anywhere from a few paragraphs to pages of copy, and well-done ones can be very productive for a business, a department, or an individual. But they must be well planned, well written, and useful in some way. Sure, it’s easy to push a button and distribute your communication to hundreds or thousands of people, or have a distribution service do it for you. But there’s little point in bringing yourself or your company wide attention with a document that undercuts your professional image rather than enhancing it. If recipients feel you’re wasting their time, they simply press Delete and you lose.

This means that you should not undertake an e-newsletter unless you’re prepared to put time into writing it or have help. Your newsletters must have substance and be simple, direct, concise, very readable, and free of jargon. E-newsletters are worth doing for the same reason that print newsletters remain important: They build relationships. Sending periodic issues keeps your client base connected to you so that when they’re in the market for your product or service again, your firm will be the first that comes to mind. For prospective customers, a credible flow of information is a superb selling tool. Further, newsletters give focus to your marketing efforts and reinforce your branding.

There are innumerable ways to approach e-newsletters. Here are some general guidelines to get you on the right track.

Know your audience and have something to say that will interest or benefit its members—The content may be timely news of your industry, advice, information on how to accomplish something they may want, or ideas. You might aim to provide a resource that connects recipients with multiple sources of information via links, or with your own in-depth resources. Brainstorm with colleagues to come up with creative ways to draw on your expertise in a newsletter your audience will value.

Know your goal—Do you want to support the marketing of a product or service? Make people feel good about your organization? Raise money? Promote recognition of your name or brand? Draw people to events or involve them?

Organize clearly—People don’t read online material; they skim or scan it. To make your newsletter scannable, use bold type in your text, and prominent subheads, to call attention to major elements of your message so readers can instantly see what’s of interest to them (or not). If your newsletter is longer than one online page, have a list of the articles up front linking to the content that follows.

Don’t come across as promotional in all or most of the content—People will not spend time reading anything that looks like self-advertising in this format, unless they are already loyal customers or fans. Give them information they will value for its own sake, and promote your product or services in a separate section. Special offers or announcements of new products are a legitimate part of the mix. A section can be headed “The latest products from XYZ,” or something similar.

Make it look good, but not glitzy—You should have a simple, clean masthead that is recognizable and connects to your organization; well-chosen, readable fonts; and good use of space. It is smart to enlist a graphic designer who works with online materials to create a design for your newsletter. Don’t shortchange the editing—nothing works against you more than misused words and marginal grammar. Enlist a second or third reviewer.

Issue the newsletter regularly, but not so often that you irritate people and get earmarked as spam—There’s no set formula to follow on frequency; you’ll have to sound that out. Once a year doesn’t serve the purpose; quarterly might; monthly is better. Although they’re simpler to produce than print newsletters, don’t underestimate the time that the thinking and writing demand.

Make your e-newsletter save-worthy, providing material that is relatively timeless—Readers will file an e-letter to read later or store it for future reference if the information is solid. Some organizations number the issues—for example, “Jack Smith’s Investment Ideas #162”—to encourage readers to collect all the issues. Archiving the issues on your own Web site so they’re available to new readers is a great way to build up your original content, too, which is always a plus for search engines.

Focus—For many e-newsletters, covering one idea is usually enough, although some e-newsletters carry a range of content in each issue: news, articles, columns, reviews, opinion pieces, surveys, lists of resources, and services. Substantial newsletters are most effective when centered on a theme that relates directly to the business being intrinsically promoted. An e-newsletter issued by a garden center, for example, covers garden tips, “plant of the week,” ask the expert Q&A, a guide on dealing with pests, and upcoming events and special sales.

Tie your e-newsletter to your other marketing efforts—Link it to your Web site, your blog, and other resources you can provide online. Give people a way to ask for more information about the subject or your firm. Provide clear contact information.

Make it easy for people to unsubscribe—Why annoy them if they don’t want to be part of your audience? Refining your database is a critical and constant effort, and “bigger” is not necessarily better.

Find ways to make it interactive—Invite comments, share information or ideas, ask questions and get answers, find out what your visitors and customers want, and tell them how to pursue additional avenues for those more deeply interested in the subject. Ask them for ideas about where else to market your services or who else might be interested.

Make it shareable—Provide a mechanism for readers to forward an issue to other people so they can, without effort on your part, expand your database—and, of course, use that database for the rest of your marketing, with discretion.