Newsletters

A newsletter is a collection of information that your audience values, delivered regularly (quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily). While it can be used as a prospecting tool, a newsletter is not intended to directly produce leads or sales. Instead, your main goal in producing a newsletter should be to build your credibility, image and customer relationship over time so you are at the top of their mind when they're ready to buy.

Decisions To Make

Knowing your target audience is extremely important when creating and distributing a newsletter. E-newsletters are cost effective and can be a great tool to funnel traffic to your web site. But if your audience prefers print over email, you'd be missing the boat with an e-newsletter.

You will also have to decide how frequently to send your newsletter. Part of this decision is a realistic assessment of how often you will be able to create content and send it out. If you are already pressed for time, it doesn't really make sense to commit to a monthly newsletter and then fail to deliver. Outsourcing can be a great solution in these situations. But don't forget your all important target audience when determining frequency. We're bombarded with marketing messages every day, so unless you can justify the value to your audience of a monthly newsletter, it's probably best to stick with a quarterly timetable.

Whatever you choose, be sure to keep in mind that the more frequent the newsletter, the shorter the content should be.

Topic Suggestions

Of course content is the most important part of a newsletter. So what should you say...exactly? Well, as you may have guessed you can't answer that question intellegently until you really understand your audience. But here are some general suggestions to get you started in thinking about content for your newsletter.

• Do a profile or case study on one of your customers
• Interview an expert in your field
• A "How To" article that helps your audience solve a common problem they have
• Announcements of new products or services
• Checklists for hiring a company or buying a product like yours

Use your imagination and think of what you would find helpful if you were a customer of your company. And keep the content informative. It's OK to add a short sales message, but a newsletter isn't the place to expand on it. Remember to use a call to action and you can have a phone number or web site take care of the details.