Keep In Touch With Newsletters

Whether you're a small local business or a corporate conglomerate, the success of your company relies on your ability to maximize conversions while minimizing your overall costs. Since retaining customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones, a large portion of your success may depend on your ability to create and maintain a personal relationship with your customers. Creating a company newsletter can be an effective way to promote your business, while keeping your company's name in the forefront of your user's mind.

One advantage newsletters offer is that they can be created in a relatively short amount of time, making them a highly effective marketing tool. Often, a campaign can be started, finished and sent out on the same day. Gone are the days of spending weeks structuring and writing out a printed document. There are no printing glitches to worry about, no envelopes to stuff, no trekking to the post office. Your audience is just a few clicks away — saving you both time and money. Newsletters provide a cost-effective way for you to reach a broad audience, helping you to:

• Increase customer retention
• Increase conversions
• Keep customers interested
• Gain valuable customer feedback
• Establish name recognition

Benefits

The benefits of creating an effective newsletter campaign are seemingly endless. The major benefit lies in the simple fact that the majority of today's society checks their email everyday, if not multiple times per day. This gives newsletters an enormous, instantaneous reach. Companies can create intelligent newsletters prompting customers to respond TODAY to receive a benefit or positive reinforcement TOMORROW. And they'll do it, customers love instant gratification — it's what turned email marketing into a billion dollar business.

The second major benefit to creating a newsletter is the effect it will have on your branding campaign. Newsletters are designed to be written in the manner you speak, therefore readers find them very relatable. By subscribing to and reading your newsletter, users will be able to get a better sense of who you are, what your company represents and how you're different from your competition. Use your newsletter to set the tone you want your company to take. This may include adjusting the template you use, the way you speak, the topics you cover and the tone you set, to individually address the needs and interests of your customers.

Newsletters can also help with customer retention. By sending out a regular newsletter you keep your company in the forefront of your customers' minds. This is your chance to 'stay in touch' with them. Let them know what you've been up to since their last visit or purchase. Give them a reason to revisit. You never know when your customers are ready to make a purchase.

Thirdly, unlike most aspects of your company, the success of your email campaign can be easily and instantly tracked. Most email marketing hosts provide software to tell you show many people opened your newsletter, what your click-through rate was, what articles or features your audience responded to the most, how many people forwarded your newsletter and how many people never opened it at all. If used correctly, these kinds of detailed statistics can help you pinpoint where you are gaining or losing ground with your customer base.

Establishing Your Purpose

Now that you know why newsletters are important, how do you go about creating one that works for you? First, you need to establish what the purpose of your newsletter will be. Is it to sell products directly or to encourage users to visit your site? Is branding your main goal or is it to generate sales? Is your focus customer retention or are you concerned with all three? Before starting any campaign, you need to take a hard look at who your target audience is, what you want them to do and how you're going to go about making them do it.

If your purpose is customer retention, your newsletter should address your customers as friends and highlight products or services that are complimentary to the ones already purchased by the customer. If your newsletter is geared toward future sales, it should detail what's new in your company and invite users to visit your website. If branding is your main objective, let your audience get to know your company on a more personal level. Be friendly and non-intimidating. Let them see what your company is really about, that you care about your readers. Ideally though, a good newsletter will do all of these things.

Your newsletter should distinguish you from your competitors. Don't let your newsletter be just another email in your customers' inboxes. Users have become accustomed to quickly deleting messages that don't immediately stand out or grab their interest. To keep your company from suffering this fate, be different! Find out what your competition is doing and do the opposite or do it better. Distinguish yourself as being superior. If your company isn't capable or doesn't have the resources to do this, it may be in your best interests to outsource the project.

Choose Your Software

After establishing your purpose, your next challenge will be selecting the right software. Are you going to go with free or fee-based software? Choosing free newsletter software will allow you to produce a newsletter at no cost, but will limit your options (like tracking and personalization preferences) and you may be required to run their ads with your content. Your audience may not appreciate seeing unrelated ads in their newsletter or may regard your newsletter as spam. We recommend using fee-based email marketing software. We're firm believers that you get what you pay for.

Even when opting for fee-based software, the number of providers you have to choose can be overwhelming. When making your decision, make sure your provider will give you all the options you need to create a well-produced and highly targeted newsletter campaign. We recommend your provider have the following features:

• Personalization Options — Your ability to personalize your newsletter will significantly increase your open and click-through rates.



• Monitoring Ability — Some providers will offer extensive monitoring and tracking capabilities, while some will not. If you have your own analytics program to track your campaigns, you might be able to save a couple bucks here. If not, we don't have to tell you which one you should opt for.



• Ability to create HTML-based newsletters (not just plain text) — HTML-based newsletters allow you to insert links into your newsletter. These links are what enable you to track your open and click-through rates. Sending a text-based newsletter will hinder your monitoring ability. This is not ideal.



• Plug-ins and Updates — Keeping your software up-to-date will help you create a better newsletter.



• Technical Support — Chances are at some point you will need help tweaking or monitoring your newsletter. Make sure your provider acknowledges this life occurrence.

It's important that you choose a reputable service. Doing business with a spammy email marketing provider may cause your newsletter to be immediately bounced back to you. When it comes to email campaigns, deliverability is the key to your success. After all, customers can't read and react to a newsletter they never received. As a result, you must be vigilant about making sure your customers' newsletters are being delivered on time.

To ensure your emails will have good deliverability, select your host wisely. If you're not careful, it is possible that you will select a host that has, unbeknownst to you, been placed on a blacklist. If your email service provider is blacklisted, your newsletter will not reach your audience. There are many legitimate (and not so legitimate) hosts that will be blacklisted and flagged as spam for using 'dirty' IPs. Unless you are actively monitoring your delivery status, you may not realize that your monthly issues are going unread.

How Are You Going To Get Subscribers?

Your subscribers are the lifeblood of your newsletter and keeping them is no easy task. People change email addresses (and 'forget' to tell you), lose interest, forget who you are and label you spam, or simply get too busy for you and unsubscribe. As a result, you need to be continuously obtaining new subscribers. But how do you do this?

If you're starting from scratch, create a sample issue that people can look at. Let them know what your newsletter is going to look like, sound like and feel like. If you have put out past issues, create a newsletter archive on your site so people can see what you've done in the past and where you're likely to go in the future. Make sure it is easy for people to subscribe put a subscription box at the top of your newsletter and on your website.

When you're creating your newsletter, include a physical address. How is this going to help you get (and keep) subscribers? People like to know there are real people behind the newsletters they get in their Inboxes. Even if the address is where you get your bills and not your actual business address (if you even have one), the address gives your audience a certain amount of security. Chances are, no one will come looking for you at the address you include, so make sure you include one.

Offer people incentives to subscribe. Will they get free advice? A discount off their next purchase? A first look at new products? Otherwise unheard of industry gossip? Everyone likes getting free stuff. Giving your readers a little something extra may cause them to give you a little something extra right back!

Creation

Finally, the fun part. It is time to create your newsletter, but make sure you plan before you write. When you're creating your newsletter it is usually best not to try and push your current products. Instead, send informational articles about your company what's new, what are you working on, what have you just finished? Update them on relevant product information regarding their last order. Make them feel like old friends and they just may be enticed to forward your message to their old friends.

Address your readers the same way you would if they were standing right in front of you. Be friendly, informative and an expert. Make them feel comfortable. The 'from' and 'subject' fields of your newsletter are very important and may dramatically increase (or decrease) your open and click-through rates. Your 'from' line should be the same for each copy of your newsletter you send out. Allow your audience to grow accustomed to seeing your name in their inboxes. Whether it's your actual name or your company name is your choice, but pick one and stick with it. Changing your name will likely confuse your readers and decrease your chances of your newsletter being read.

The goal of your subject line is to stop the reader from their intuitive tendency to hit the delete button. Your subject field should be short, use proper capitalization (never use all caps!) and attention grabbing. Unless you catch the reader's interest, it's straight to the trash can you go. Try telling your readers something they don't already know. Using 'How to' subject lines are perfect for this. Grab their attention right off the bat and they're more likely to stick around and click through to your newsletter.

Make your newsletter skimmable. Let's face it; no one is going to read through an endless page of text. Use bold, italicized and

Before you send your newsletter, read it to yourself (or someone else) out loud. People often have a tendency to write in a way that sounds completely unnatural when spoken. If you read it out loud and suddenly your newsletter doesn't make as much sense, chances are that's the way your reader will read it. Your company newsletter is your chance to humanize your website so make sure the tone is friendly and approachable. If your audience feels they can identify with you they are more likely to keep your reading your newsletter and to do business with you in the future. No one likes a cold corporate conglomerate. You can be personable and still be professional.

What Do You Write About?

Use your monthly newsletter to keep your readers informed on all the industry happenings. Give them small news tidbits that they are unlikely to have heard about on their own. Doing so will reestablish your role as an industry expert. Write articles designed to help users perform a certain task. Whether it's "What to Look for When Buying a New Computer" to "How to Cross-Stitch on Single Crochet" make it something your readers will be interested in.

Now, no matter how creative you are, eventually you're going to run out of ideas for newsletter content. So why not ask your audience what they're interested in? This will not only give you ideas for article topics, but it will help you to understand what your audience is interested in. Best of all, it will show your audience that you are interested in their needs and interests. What are the issues they're worried about? What do they want advice on?

Keep 'Em Coming

The newsletters, and your subscribers, that is. You never know when your audience is in a buying mood. By actively targeting them, it increases your chances at delivering the right message at the right time. We suggest sending out a fresh newsletter once a month. Any more than that and you run the risk of being ignored or worse yet, being considered annoying, any less than that and you run the risk of your customers forgetting who you are!

Email newsletters are an extremely cost-effective way of keeping in touch with your audience to help increase conversations and maximize your return on investment. Your efforts will pay off with repeat business, customer referrals and loyal customers. And with email being extremely cost-effective, each sale generated is virtually all profit.