Planning an E-Newsletter to Build Profitable Long-Term Relationships
Does your business have a regular newsletter? Or are you spending your whole PR budget on advertising?
Good business newsletters are priceless in the long run. Tell people they have to use your software, and anyone who doesn’t immediately agree will delete your ad and forget about it. Provide a list of twenty ways to maximize computer efficiency, and people will remember you as knowledgeable and helpful. Give them helpful computer hints every week for two months, and they’ll appreciate you enough to think of you first when they—or others they know—actually need a software like yours. Consumers like to know that you care about their needs, not simply their money.
But as with any other tool, an e-newsletter is most effective when properly designed. Before your first issue:
* Set a distribution schedule—once a week is ideal—for at least the first six months. Always send newsletters on the same day of the week or month. Not only does this regularly remind consumers of your existence, but they form general opinions of your dependability based on the long-term consistency of your mailings.
* Assign (or hire) an experienced writer to create the text, and a professional designer to prepare the visual template. One reason many newsletters fail is that planners try to dash them off in whatever spare time is available, which invariably results in sloppy, dull writing. Conscientious hard work is as vital here as anywhere else in a business.
* Consider who your readers will be. Potential customers quickly become bored with inside details on company operations. Figure out what larger aspects of your professional field relate to the public’s everyday needs.
* Instead of e-mailing a whole newsletter, consider doing a blog and e-mailing brief descriptions of each new post. (Don’t forget the link!) Blogs are, after all, nothing more than one-article newsletters; and putting your newsletter online eliminates most problems with spam filters, scrambled graphics, and misplaced back issues.
* Keep advertisements to an inconspicuous minimum. Remember that newsletters are not for making sales but for building relationships. Newsletters encourage readers to think well of you, to keep coming back as customers, and to recommend you to their friends. Newsletters are saved for future reference. Newsletters have staying power.
And it’s staying power that determines a business’s ultimate success.
