At first the decision to publish a newsletter looks easy: "My competitors have newsletters; therefore, I need one." Theirs come out monthly, so yours needs to be monthly. Theirs is HTML-based, so yours needs to look the same.
Many first-time newsletter publishers make this mistake. But launching a newsletter because your competition has one is not the right reason to publish one.
It takes time, money and energy to produce a newsletter that people look forward to reading, enjoy and are willing to pass on to their friends and colleagues. Before you make this commitment, you should have a mission for the newsletter and a plan for creating it on a regular basis.
The Mission
A newsletter can be promotional or marketing oriented, informative or relationship building. Regardless of the mission you choose, you should let the reader know your intentions about the direction of the publication and stick to that plan. Consistency is important. If you promise news and information, don't bore the reader with sales promotions. If, on the other hand, the plan is to send out a relationship-building newsletter 11 months of the year and then publish a promotional one come spring, let readers know it’s coming.
The Content
Readers are looking for timely, practical, useful information. If a company increased profits by 320 percent over the same time last year, that’s news! News can also be promotional. Do you have a new service or product coming to market, or a seasonal item? Then it makes sense to publish the newsletter at that appropriate time.
You can also use the newsletter to build relationships with clients. For example, if calls are coming in about specific problems with a product, then discuss the problem and solution in the upcoming newsletter. This is a win-win situation. Customers are grateful that someone is looking after their best interests and the number of support calls will certainly drop.
Related: Making Email Newsletters More Social
Your newsletter can be informative. You can discuss how a new technology may affect your customers’ or prospects’ business. Give them honest information about how this improvement helps them deliver better service or generate more revenue.
Another way to pique readers' interest is to write two- and three-part stories. It's a good way to keep people coming back for more, and sometimes information just cannot be crammed into one issue. Don’t be restrictive. Give the information the space it deserves.
The Frequency
Now that you've determined you have enough news and information to share, decide how often you to publish. Newsletters need to come out on some schedule so people can anticipate receiving them. If you publish too often, the reader’s interest will wane or they will start considering you spam, even if they willingly signed up for the newsletter. Newsletters can also drain resources. Writing articles can take enormous energy, and sometimes newsletter editors find themselves trapped in a format they must "feed." Keep it simple and newsworthy.
A good approach is to start out slowly. Make sure there is time allocated to produce the newsletter and it’s a good read. Perhaps start out quarterly and then move to bimonthly. People rarely complain about receiving useful news too often.
The Metrics
One of the best advantages email newsletters have over their printed compatriots is metrics. When you mail a paper newsletter, it's impossible to find out if it went straight into the recycle bin or if the recipient loved it so much they photocopied it and passed it on to numerous friends. Email newsletter services, however, offer many useful metrics.
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You can find out how many people received the email, how many "bounced" because of a bad email address, how many people opened the newsletter, how many forwarded it to friends, and more. These services also handle your unsubscribe requests, ensuring you are following the law when people request to opt out of your newsletter.
Related: Do You Know What Clicks With Your Email Newsletter Readers?
And because of the importance of these metrics and the unsubscribe process, finding a good email service provider -- Constant Contact and iContact are two popular choices -- is a crucial step in the creation of your email newsletter.
Serving the Reader
Finally, know your reader base. Don’t take them for granted. Find out what they are interested in knowing or learning. Invite readers to respond. Ask for their opinion. Let the reader get to know the editor of the newsletter. A person should let their personality show through the writing. It is much easier to build a relationship if each party shares information about themselves.
Respect their time: If a newsletter cannot be read within five minutes, it’s destined for the trash folder. It hurts, but it’s the truth. Busy people segment their time with five minutes for this and 10 minutes for that. A good newsletter fits into that window.
Related: The Unwritten Rules for Online Publishers
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Comments:
There are numerous email marketing services out there. I found a service called Email Contact that is affordable and very easy to use. Affordable is one I need when the economy is struggling.
Thank you John for the suggestion. I really appreciate it. It has been hard to keep up with a site, and the idea of more 'resource drain', even if only our time, is important to consider.
Tammy, Getting permission was Seth Godin's idea long before it was mine...he wrote a great book several years back titled Permission Marketing.
Ray, You may want to think about blogging your news for awhile instead of starting a newsletter. Newsletters are a real resource drain. If people subscribe to your blog you'll know they are interested in what you have to say.
Great suggestions. My wife and I are working on creating a newsletter for our site: Baby Development. There are many things to think about as we do this, and at times we suffer from the analysis paralysis problem, never getting it done. But, your advice to Now that you've determined you have enough news and information to share, decide how often you to publish. is quite helpful. Thanks.
Great Post John. When launching a new newsletter I always recommend to my clients that we send out a "permission mailer" to their entire dtatbase. We let them know that we would like to communiate with them, and what the intention of our newletters are. Then we ask them for permnission to continue communicating with them via email or SMS. At thast point they can choose to opt-out or unsubscribe from our emails. This is a great way to "scrub" your database and it communicates to your customers that you care how they feel. And as Mike said, make sure your unsubscribe button works!
My favorite line here is "Find out what they are interested in knowing or learning.". So often as marketers WE have what we believe is great information to share. The things that WE think our readers are just dying to hear. However, quite often the shiny new nugget of information that we think is important isn't what our readers are most interested in. Learning what information your target audience wants to hear is essential. Ask them directly, see what types of questions & content they are tweeting about, look at other popular blogs & what content gets the most comments of 'shares'. Writing about what your readers want to hear means they will actually read what you are writing.
The best part of this article was "they will start considering you spam, even if they willingly signed up for the newsletter", this is so true...it has happened to me. As an addition to this article, make sure your unsubscribe link works. We had an issue with ours via the Firefox browser and receive some nasty emails from people when it didn't work.
Hey, thanks for posting this one. I think internet marketers should be able to know about all of these things. As marketer, I can say that this is a very effective strategy.