How to use e-newsletters for effective marketing

Marketing is about long term relationship building, and a superb way of keeping your customers informed about your business over a long period of time is through a newsletter.

I have written at length about paper newsletters in the past, but now is the turn of the electronic version or e-newsletter. These are a very effective way of communication with a selection of recipients who should have expressed an interest to receive your publications (these things need to be permission based so not to be classed as spam), with the purpose to inform, educate, publicise and maintain a connection with your customer base so they don’t forget you and go off with someone else.

The first thing is to collect your customers’ contact details via an autoresponder, preferably through a double-opt-in system through a sign up form on your website. Having a secure database coupled with a template system will facilitate the procedure, especially with a large collection of details, and you can divide or create separate lists for particular campaigns or promotions.

Use marketing campaigns to collect customers’ details through the incentive system. Playing on the customers’ greed factor is an appropriate way of gathering contacts. But one thing that is not polite is to assume that after a networking meeting you can take advantage of ‘business card dumping’, which is uploading these details directly into your database, as not everybody would appreciate receiving your newsletter without their permission.

Newsletters should only be sent with a direct purpose which should be valid and appropriate. Don’t be compelled to send something out just because you said your newsletter will be bi-monthly or whatever. You want your readers to look forward to the next issue, and receive it with interest once it pops into their in-box. The last thing you want is for them to unsubscribe (a facility which should be available with every publication).

Using a template to make your newsletter ‘look pretty’ seems to be a specific requirement, but I would like to add that some businesses do very well without any special effects, as the success of a newsletter should depend mainly on the content. But if you think your readers ‘expect’ this treatment then there are plenty of templates available.

Don’t fall into the trap (myself included) of just sending out newsletters without a proper purpose or call to action.  Successful businesses always have an aim or reason for their messages, culminating in signing up for an event, publicising a promotion, highlighting a new concept that has become available, as well as increasing your expertise status. If you don’t have a call to action, ask your readers to send this newsletter to someone else who might be interested, which is another way of increasing your database of recipients, or allow them to reprint its content in another publication such as a blog or forum.

My call to action is, as well as passing this on to your friends and colleagues, if you are interested in setting up a newsletter and would like help in creating one, then I am writing a series of packages in ‘how to create marketing newsletters’ through systems such as ConstantContact.com. This will accompany a similar package called ‘How to beautify your blog’ of which details are now available through the link.

Make-up an on-line impression

Guest blog by LisaMarie Dias, e-newsletter diva

I don’t wear much make-up, but I do use under-eye concealer almost every day. If you use this, you know how hard it is to find a shade and texture that matches your skin. Finding one that I liked was a challenge, so I was thrilled when the woman behind the make-up counter found one for me that seemed perfect.

I brought it home only to realize that the sleek metal tube was nearly impossible to open, especially with my slightly moisturized fingers. Even after I scrubbed clean both my hands and tube, I still had great difficulty. Days later, still struggling with the tube, I realized that if I twisted it, even slightly, while attempting to open it, large quantities of the product would gush out of the cap. Although the color matched and the tube design was attractive, I’d never buy this product again.

As I thought about it more, I realized that this experience has many parallels with my work creating online marketing materials for small businesses. As great as your product or service might be, if the end user cannot open your message, opens it but can’t read it, or if it creates a mess (think viruses – even the threat of one) they will NOT come back for more.

With this in mind, I have created a list of suggestions for making sure that your message is heard:

§    Do not use a regular email service, like Outlook or AOL to create and/or send your mailings:
•    There are limits to the number of recipients you can send to at any one time without being tagged as SPAM. Even if you send them in batches, there is a chance that your address will be tagged and blocked.
•    Regular email is designed for single-column, letter-format correspondence, not longer, more informative and multi-columned documents.

§    Use an online marketing tool to deliver your message:
•    Services like Constant Contact and others provide tools to create documents that are clear, clean, and easy to read across multiple platforms. They allow you to divide your text into columns and to add photos and images to make your message both more readable and more enjoyable
•    These services work to ensure that your message is not considered SPAM. While no one service can promise that every message will be accepted (there are personal, private, and corporate filters that can still be a barrier), these services increase your chances of getting through.

You put a tremendous amount of time, money and energy into your online marketing materials; make sure that you use a delivery method which ensures that they are easily opened and enjoyed!

LisaMarie Dias helps individuals and small businesses create customized online e-newsletters, e-zines, product announcements and more, using Constant Contact and other online delivery services.  If you are looking for an easy and affordable way to get your message online and into your client’s inbox or want to start an e-newsletter but just don’t know where to begin, LisaMarie Dias Designs can help!

Visit www.LisaMarieDiasDesigns.com to learn more about her services and to find links to Constant Contact where you can sign up for a f.ree 60 day trial!  Email LMD@LisaMarieDiasDesigns.com to set up a complimentary 15 minute phone consultation to see how she can help you get your message from your hands to your client’s inbox!
  Sign up here for LisaMarie’s monthly newsletter filled with tips and suggestions on how to design and create your own custom e-newsletter for your business, your child’s sports teams or volunteer efforts!

What makes a good e-newsletter?

Recently I have been posting questions in Ecademy and LinkedIn to find out what people think about e-newsletters.  The answers have been varied and very interesting, plenty of material to write some articles, fuelled by diverse attitudes and individualistic insights.

One thought is that e-newsletters need to be well crafted and sent to the right people.  Unlike paper newsletters, they are not a medium for lengthy and multiple information.  They are not constructed for leisurely reading-time or many chapters; the computer screen is not suitable for reading, as the light makes eyes tired and swimmy, concentration difficult to focus and, basically, we don’t have time to read newsletters when there’s a full in-box requiring our attention.

E-newsletters should contain only one subject that is relevant, wanted, needed and interesting. If readers consider it good value, gain knowledge and can see how it would affect them and their business, they are then more inclined to look forward to the next issue. The missives that go on for pages, endless scrolling down to find the crux of the concept, or, like many American versions, constantly needing to provide alternative examples to make their point, will not only turn people off but will result in maybe some valid information being missed amongst the padding.

There’s a misconstrued idea that your e-newsletter needs to be full of content. This is not the case: ideally one subject is adequate, as really it should be used to slam home a valid point via quick scanning methods into this time-starved world.  You could tell your readership about a particular post you’ve uploaded onto your blog, where you can elaborate more fully, and also have the benefit of receiving comments as feedback.

And then there’s your readers – are they right for your newsletter, or is the content of your newsletter relevant to them? You need to consider their time and how much is it worth.  Are you providing information that is worth reading, offering time-value benefits to their business, providing contribution that stands out from the rest, presented in a punchy, poignant and potent method to make your audience think, understand, react and come back for more? As long as you are providing equal merits in a quick-read format, then your newsletter will succeed.

Snail mail versus failed e-mail

My friend told me that she recently had an email from one of her newsletter recipients saying that she hadn’t heard from her lately and she thought she had stopped trading.

This was very worrying for my friend. How many other people hadn’t got their newsletters each month? OK, she wasn’t using an autoresponder, which would have made her life a bit more laborious, but the problem was that she was unaware that the emails hadn’t reached their destination.

One suggestion I gave her was to occasionally alternate with a paper newsletter, or even a newsletter postcard as explained in my previous post. It would help to maintain the interest from her subscribers, guarantee getting read and provide another focal point to her communications.

This leads to the question: can you rely on the internet for your communication? Especially nowadays with over-full in-boxes stuffed to the gills with spam and other missives. How do you know your e-newsletters are getting read and not swamped, forgotten or deleted? Sure, you may be able to track that they’ve been opened if you use an autoresponder, but that doesn’t mean they’ve even been scanned for interesting content yet alone properly scrutinised.

What used to happen back in the dark ages before email? Paper newsletters were used to impart news, tell stories and crow about your company. They were a media for advertising and articles. The news was both past, present and future. They were read without eye-strain. OK, you did rely on the Post Office and it cost to send them, but they were more likely to be read at the recipient’s leisure, more than once and passed around our friends and contacts. They were not as frequent, so were looked forward to the next issue. They were not deemed ‘a pain’ when they plopped onto our doormats.

The most important elements of a newsletter are: relevance, of interest to the reader, well designed for readability, legible, captivating and newsworthy, excellent copy, good spelling and grammar, striking pictures, grabbing headlines, and being well read. Can e-newsletters lay claim to all these qualities?