Use these tips to turn your newsletter into a powerful marketing tool.
One of the most effective forms to communicate with your customers is a customer newsletter. At first thought, it may seem easy to throw a newsletter together. Creating an effective newsletter that engages your readers, motivates them and keeps them opening your emails month after month is slightly more challenging. Use these tips to create a compelling newsletter to solidify your customer relationships and boost your business sales simultaneously.
Anatomy of an Effective Newsletter
The purpose of a customer newsletter is to share useful content alongside information about your business, products and services. A newsletter is a soft sell approach to promoting your business, but more importantly, it’s a tool to creating credibility for your business and positioning your company as an expert in the minds of the recipients.
Subject Lines
You may have the best customer newsletter ever created, but if can’t get your customers to open it, then it’s all for naught. The first step to get them to click the newsletter open is to create email subject lines that intrigue them enough to want to find out more. When creating your subject lines, think about the headlines that grab your attention in newspapers, magazines and emails you read and then model your subject lines after these headlines. Keep you subject lines short, simple and to-the-point with a twist of intrigue thrown in for good measure.
Personalize It
While the same newsletter goes to all of your customers, personalizing the newsletter with the name of the customer can be a powerful tool. Newsletter software programs allow you to include the customers’ names with a few clicks of your mouse. Personalization helps you to connect better with the customer and make them feel like you’re speaking directly to them.
Article
Since a newsletter is about sharing useful content with your customers, the primary item in your newsletter is an informational article with tips, advice or other information that relates to your industry and is relevant to your audience. You can either write these articles, hire a writer to do it for you or use reprint articles, where the writer allows you to use the content as long as they receive credit for the article.
Layout
Clean, simple, easy-to-read and professional newsletters create the right first impression. Creating an aesthetically pleasing newsletter can propel the recipient to read the information it contains. You can have a graphic designer create a newsletter template for you or you can use software programs that allow you to customize professionally designed templates.
You should also include a promotion or special offer, have an About Us section that describes your company and provides full contact information for your business. Contact information should include an email address, phone, Web site address and physical/mailing address.
Successful customer newsletters share these characteristics. Newsletters are a very effective marketing tool when it contains these characteristics.
