Newsletters - do they work?

The art of clear and interesting communication is important and it's wonderful to receive good, concise and relevant newsletters that provide a real benefit, even if it's just a smile or a useful web link.

I find writing newsletters hard - I need to announce products, direct people to links on my site or the blog and share information. Making it relevant to my audience is sometimes difficult when I have such a fantastic wide range of people that I connect with. But before you go down the 'segment the market' route, don't worry, I do.

Something I liked

Back to newsletters - today I received a newsletter that started with:

You are a 100% Verified Member of this mailing list. To stop receiving this newsletter, Ordinary Brilliance, please visit the end of this email.

Hello Carolyn,

Your one-minute-to-read issue of Ordinary Brilliance is here. Take just one minute to read it now.

And then the main body of the newsletter focused on just one key customer service issue. It did take a couple of minutes to read (not one, maybe I'm a slow reader) - but it was relevant, carried a good business message and had an interesting and tempting offer at the end. The message hit the right spot for me. It also helped that I knew who the newsletter was from.

How do you do it?

Clear communication - stating what you mean right up front, asking for engagement and being clear about why you are contacting someone - is crucial. I think I've a lot to learn from Anne Alexander's approach (check out her guest blog entry on Dealing with Problem Employees).

I also receive some really fancy emails with lots of graphics and some in simple plain text. The key to getting me to read them is content - and sometimes I completely miss it.

There's a lot to having really gripping opening copy (and not just for newsletters) but stating who you are and what you expect right up front is not a bad tactic. I wonder how many golden nuggets I've missed just because the complex graphics that take too long to download or some fussy intro turns me off before I get to the really good content?

But do newsletters actually work? If you do them properly, then yes. There's lots of guides out there on the web to writing a good newsletter - I quite liked this one: http://www.webmarketcentral.com/effective_email_newsletters.htm.

Unsubscribe
The most important thing to remember (and Anne puts it right at the top of her newsletters) is the Unsubscribe option. Not only is it a legal requirement in many countries, but you are empowering your audience. Every unsubscribe I get I always acknowledge politely and expedite as quickly as I can - just because they don't want my newsletter doesn't mean they won't ever visit my site again. A useful feedback tool is to have a 'please tell us why you unsubscribed' if your system can manage it, but only if it doesn't mean too many hoops for your audience to jump through.

Hopefully people who register for my newsletter (easy to do, visit the site and fill in the box on the right or drop me a note via the contact page) are familiar with the style and content of my newsletters. Yes, they include product announcements but I do make sure I have some interesting articles and don't just 'sell sell sell'.

(C) Carolyn Sheppard 2009

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