On one thing, the experts agree—follow-up is the single most important and least used marketing strategy. A promotional newsletter featuring trade news, customer success stories, and information about your products or services is an excellent way to establish and grow your relationship with customers.
In addition, a promotional newsletter can help you build credibility and enhance your image with potential and existing customers. By providing useful information in a professional format, your readers will perceive you as a knowledgeable person in your field. They will also appreciate any information that can be helpful and/or save them money.
Creation of your newsletter should follow four stages. The two stages requiring the most effort are:
The remaining stages, once your newsletter is put together, are not as complex and, therefore, less time-consuming:
Planning a Newsletter:
Producing your newsletter, especially the first issue, will require a significant commitment of time on your part. It's important to remember that each subsequent issue will be much simpler and faster to produce. You will need to address the following issues during this stage:
Decide on who should receive your newsletter.
Anyone who might benefit by or appreciate the information it contains or who might be motivated to purchase your product or service after reading it should receive your newsletter. This would include:
Anyone with whom you want to maintain a good image should also receive your newsletter. This would include:
Begin Building Your Mailing List:
You have many sources for building your mailing list:
Remember to carefully target your market so your mailing list represents those individuals who are most likely to purchase your product or service.
Determine Your Budget:
Early on in the planning process, you'll need to establish a budget from which to work. A preliminary estimate of a budget will drive other key decisions you'll make regarding your newsletter. For instance, the size of your budget will impact:
Determine How Often You Will Produce Your Newsletter:
You may have enough material to fill a newsletter once a month or once every three months. But material or not, you need to assess the time you can devote to producing the newsletter. Only you can realistically evaluate how much material and time you have to devote to creating your newsletter.
As a rule of thumb, four times a year is a minimum. Why? In order for your newsletter to fulfill the goals of enhanced image and increased sales, it needs to be a consistent information vehicle. You want your readers to be familiar with it when it arrives in their email. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall mailings will establish its regularity, and your readers will come to look forward to its arrival. Producing your publication less than four times a year will not be an effective use of this promotional vehicle.
Take a few moments to determine your newsletter's frequency. Don't forget to factor in the time constraints on you.
Decide on the Content of Your Newsletter:
There are two primary ways to generate the content of your newsletter:
Reuse existing material. The benefit of a promotional newsletter is that in addition to promoting your products and/or services, you can virtually reuse other existing materials such as speeches, press releases, company backgrounds, and annual reports.
Make a list of written material you have right now that you can use to create your content:
Develop and write your
own articles. There
are many kinds of stories and articles you can use to fill your
newsletter and make it a valuable and interesting source of information
for your customers and potential customers. You may also solicit
articles from colleagues. This is good PR for them, as well. It's
important to remember that while you want to promote your business
or product, you need to make your newsletter worthwhile enough
so that it doesn't appear to be a long advertisement.
Designing a Newsletter:
Now that you have your articles written and/or selected products to promote, it's time to put them into a newsletter form. This is called layout literally laying the content into the newsletter format. Layout is the most fundamental aspect of the design process. It's quite acceptable for your newsletter to have a simple design. Remember, you're trying to increase awareness of your product or business so the key design element is consistency. From newsletter to newsletter the look and layout should be the same so readers will come to recognize and expect it.
Do you need to hire a designer? Maybe not. If you choose to use a professional service i.e. Constant Contact, their programs make designing a newsletter a fairly simple (and even fun) process. If you are seriously committed to the idea of publishing a newsletter it may be more cost-effective in the long run to consider using one of these programs.
The look and general content of your newsletter may not be totally established with the first issue. Don't worry. Usually after the third or fourth issue, you will have a better idea of how your newsletter will appear, how much space you have, where the regular columns will appear. Give your newsletter a chance to evolve. If you feel that you're still having trouble establishing the look and image of your newsletter after the fourth issue, you may want to consider consulting a professional designer for guidance.
Proofreading Your Newsletter:
Once you have completed the content and it's laid out in your computer, you should proof it. A trick of the trade is to proof your copy by reading it backwards. This forces you to read each work separately, rather than scanning groups of words as you might do in reading.
Another rule you should always follow after you've proofed your own work is to have at least one other person review the copy. It simply isn't realistic to think you can catch all of your own mistakes. Errors in your text will diminish all the good work you've done on your newsletter, so try to catch them all.
If you elect not to use a professional service, you may use NetCo Services' List Management program to send your newsletter. The List Management section on the Site Management screen allows you to create and manage mailing lists for your web site. Login to your online control panel at http://www.YourDomain.com/siteadmin/.
To add a mailing list:
1. Go to the Site Management
screen.
2. Click List Management.
3. Click Add Mailing List.
4. Enter a name for the mailing list, then enter the email addresses
of the members of the list.
5. If there are existing users you want to include in the list,
select them (one at a time) from the pull-down menu, and then
click the bent, down-pointing arrow to add the selected user to
the list.
6. You can specify aliases for the mailing list by entering them
in the "Aliases" area. (You don't need to include the
domain in the aliases.)
7. When you're finished, click Confirm New Mailing List.
To modify a mailing list, go to the Site Management screen, click List Management, click the pencil icon for the mailing list, modify the information as needed, and then click Confirm Modify.
To delete a mailing list, go to the Site Management screen, click List Management, click the trash icon for the mailing list, and then click OK to confirm that you want to delete the mailing list.
Auto subscribe and unsubscribe features may also be added to your web site. Contact NetCo Services Support for details.
To send a newsletter using the List Management tool, address the newsletter to NameOfMailingList@www.YourDomain.com. This will automatically send the newsletter to everyone on your list.
Please conform with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
1. Requires that your
have a working unsubscribe system that makes it easy for recipients
to unsubscribe opt out of receiving your e-mails.
2. Requires e-mailers to include their postal mailing address
in the message.
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