Using newsletters to reach customers

Keeping in touch with customers is more than sending sales offers. Good correspondence should include items that are of interest and benefit. Be sure that the format is pleasing to your readers. Often less is more. Don’t clutter your newsletter with ads or marketing material. Spend time to optimize your content and format so you get more readers that look forward to each issue.

Choose a format

Format is a personal choice, but be sure that you choose a format that is pleasing to your readers. Depending on your industry and customer base, you may have long or short articles. There are many ways to test format, but be sure to test and modify. You can test with a select group of customers or you could create several formats and see which one works the best. Both of those strategies take time. At a minimum, track the opens and clicks from each issue of your online newsletter. If you use a newsletter service, it is easy to get these metrics.

Layout – Carefully choose a layout that is attractive and suited to your readers. Putting your logo at the top and information about your company and offerings on the sidebar is a classic format. You may want to experiment with some more daring themes, but once you choose a format stick with it so your readers will recognize each issue. Newsletter format is branding.

Article length – The length of articles not only depends on the topic but your readers. If your readers are computer programmers and your article is about specifics of programming, you can write long informative articles that are well read. If you write articles for business people, you have to quickly get to the point. For your online newsletter, use links so the reader can learn more about a topic.

Testing length and content – Make sure that you are tracking clicks on the links. This way you will know the link popularity by the number of clicks. When a customer clicks on the link, you can track by email address and make a sales follow-up call. But don’t tell the customer that you are calling because they clicked on a link. That’s a sure way to turn off your prospect.

Use pictures and graphics – People like to look at pictures. In each issue, be sure to include a couple of attractive pictures that match the content. There are several royalty free sites where you can get pictures, illustrations and videos for a reasonable cost.

Add Content

Use real news, tips and offers. Examples are: company and industry news, business tips and advice, money saving offers and announcement of new products. Don’t use filler, it will be obvious to your readers. And once you start, you have to be consistent. If you have a quarterly newsletter, be sure to publish it quarterly!

Company news – Give real information about what your company is doing for employees, customers and the community. Press releases are valuable for promoting your company. Use the content created for press releases for your newsletters. Press releases are written in the third person, so be sure to change to first person narratives for newsletters. First person articles are more personal and allow you to connect with customers. Be sure to include any events or activities that you are hosting.

Industry news – Let your customers know about industry news that you find interesting. This requires that you keep updated on what is going on in your industry. Make sure the news is relevant. If it’s not informational, don’t use it.

Business tips and advice – This is the most important content of your newsletter as it establishes you as the expert. Use time-saving and money-saving tips that have step-by-step examples or specific case studies. For business advice, be clear and concise. Give examples on how you have achieved benefits. These types of articles can be used for your blog, technical notes or web page content.

Article reprint and guest contributors – These are easy ways to build content. Be sure you have permission for reprints and that guest articles are relevant to your content. Inviting guests to submit to your newsletter can be good for partnership building.

Money saving offers – Use special offers in your newsletters that are really unique. Offers should be a good value and relevant to your market. Don’t use the same offer over and over. Make sure that the offer is targeted and special. You don’t have to include a special offer in each issue of your newsletter.

New products – Whether your own product or a partner product, add new products that help your customers be more efficient and productive. In general, the case for products should have a value statement that shows how you can increase revenue or reduce costs. Some products have a “cool” factor that you may want to include even if you can’t quantify the benefits.

Before you publish – proofread!

For more tips, visit: http://www.lansystems.com

May Puzzle - The Ball

The Ball
How can you throw a ball as hard as you can and have it come back to you? It isn’t caught and returned by anyone, it doesn’t hit anything and there is nothing attached to it.



Send your answer to puzzle@lansystems.com. All correct answers will be entered in our monthly drawing.

What do Confucious, Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump have in common ...

... they are quoted hundreds of times a day on Twitter.

For the record, I like a motivational quote as much as then next gal. The targeted quote used to introduce an article or chapter can be informational and inspirational, but thousands of quotes a day on Twitter are just Internet fodder.

Successful social media aficionados have to post and tweet many times a day even if they have nothing of consequence to say. Right? No. You can reach your desired audience with interesting and beneficial information while maintaining your decorum. Got to use a quote here - "Less is more" Robert Browning

Etiquette in the virtual space has the same rules as in the physical space. You would never spam someone at a dinner party and if you did you wouldn't be invited again. Before jumping into your sales pitch, you'd take time to get to know the person and establish rapport. Before sending endless correspondence, you'd ask permission and if declined you would happily respect the request.

Online doesn't mean anonymous. In fact, your local online community is a just that - a community. Although it's larger, it still has the same expectation of etiquette, manners and acceptable behavior as any community. You are expected to be polite in person and online.

Facebook and other online social sites give us the opportunity to have more friends than ever before. That's because we can more easily keep up with the activities that make us friends. It is estimated that before social media, we had an average of 150 friends. With social media, that average is up around 700. But we still expect kindness, politeness and courtesy from our friends. I like Aliza Sherman's 10 Golden Rules of Social Media as a guide to using the online communities. Regardless of the media, we are people communicating with people.

As the social media and marketing experts (that's all of us) decide what is an effective online strategy and as our expectations of social media as a marketing tool are redefined, we should remember what our mothers taught us -

"If you can't say something that's not spam, don't say anything"
"There is no substitute for good manners"
"Silence is golden"
and "Don't forget the Golden Rule."

Until next time ... shhhhh

Check out my @constantcontact newsletter

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs008/1101911428977/archive/1103208735868.html

Check out my @constantcontact newsletter

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs008/1101911428977/archive/1103357067193.html

The Internet is the Wild, Wild West ….

... and there ain’t no Sheriff in town!

Just like the western frontier the Internet is a place where opportunity abounds, but it is not without danger. If you understand risk, manage uncertainly and protect yourself from diabolical people, the Internet is a magical place. When online, a good rule to follow is “when in doubt – don’t.”

Two main problems with the Internet are that 1) there are more scammers than can be counted and 2) it is hard, sometimes impossible, to determine authenticity.

In the Wild, Wild West if some cowboy came riding up to you, you’d better be a quicker shot or have a trusted friend covering your back. You could never take any chances because there were all kinds of hoodlums out there, alone or in gangs, that were trying to separate you from your property. And if you had established your homestead (website, email address), you’d have even more to worry about because they would always know where to find you.

On the Internet, the cowboys are the scammers and your trusted friend is your firewall, Spam filter and malware protection software to name a few. But even with these helpers covering your back, you could fall prey to a malicious attack. So you have to have a backup plan to protect all your critical data.

On the Internet, anyone can pretend to be anyone. Determining someone’s authenticity is just not that easy. In the Wild, Wild West anyone could steal the sheriff’s badge and the judge’s credentials. Unless you had another way to identify them, you could be fooled. This happens several times a second on the Internet. A scam artist masquerading as a someone authentic gets you to download malware, adware, ransomware, gives you a virus, steals your identity, gets you to buy something or send money to claim your million dollar inheritance. Many of these scams are so obvious that it is hard to believe that people still fall for it, but then again it is the Wild, Wild West!

For ways to protect yourself, see our Tech Notes at http://www.lansystems.com.

OMG IONO Wa UR Saying!

Every generation has its slang and every industry its acronyms. Most of these abbreviations are just alphabet soup to outsiders. But if you are going to join an industry or snoop on your teenagers, you have to learn the lingo.

There are many abbreviations that have multiple meanings. Take GIS - I learned it as Gas Insulated Substation. The first time I heard GIS used as meaning Geographic Information System, it was in the context of "we need to update the GIS with the latest maps." It didn't make any sense at all. At the risk of embarrassing myself and sounding stupid, I asked what does GIS mean? You'd have thought I had two heads. After that I made a policy that acronyms have to be defined before they are used. I compiled a list of acronyms for our industry and put them in a manual and later and eBook. Not many people want to know what SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) means, but there are some that live for this information!

As you know, the military is great for acronyms and has some very flowery ones. Parents have to know what PAW, POS and P911 mean as well as a host of others that describe what your children are doing. Scan through the list and I think you will be surprised at the number of text message abbreviations dedicated to specific actions and emotions.

Will this generation destroy the world with text messaging? I don't think so. Every generation was going to destroy the world because of their reckless abandon and callous disregard for the way society works. Look rock-n-roll music, mini-shirts, MTV, the Internet and text messaging - each a danger in itself, but here we are. The analog generation figured it out and I think this millennium generation will too.
BTW, text abbreviations work for casual communications, but don't use in business correspondence or resumes. If you are not hip with the current lingo, look it up before retweeting or repeating. There are several sites that have deciphered lists. NetLingo has a good list with tips.

OMG IONO Wa UR Saying! means Oh my gosh, I don't know what your are saying!