Customer and Client Newsletters

Newsletters build a relationship with your existing clients to:

* encourage them to come back more often
* encourage them to spend more with you
* turn them into loyal clients
* put your business at the top of their minds

Newsletters help you earn more revenue from new clients by:

* getting referrals from satisfied clients
* making you an expert in your field
* targeting people most likely to buy
* giving customers special offers they'll appreciate

Newsletters help you save money on marketing by:

* reducing your marketing costs
* being more effective than yellow pages or other advertising
* doing your marketing for you
* providing long-term, effective, 'stealth' marketing

The content should be about your clients, not about you. Many businesses think all they need to do is say how great they are and people will come rushing. Unfortunately, that's not the case; it will seem like bragging and you won't engage the reader. Instead, the content should be about topics that interest the client. When you've engaged your reader
with interesting and useful articles, you will have earned their trust, which will in turn lead to more repeat business.

It should be a 'must read' for your clients. If people are bored by what you have to say, they'll stop reading and you won't get the benefits that sending a regular newsletter can bring. Make it look professional. Your business is run professionally, so your newsletter must look professional too. Use good writers (and make sure there are no spelling mistakes in the articles) and a good designer who can make your newsletter look like something people might pay money for. Then have it printed on high-quality paper. If your newsletter looks amateur and is full of errors, it will reflect badly on your practice.

Get personal. Continue the connection you made with your client when they last did business with you by revealing a little about yourself in your newsletter. With so many 'corporate' publications out there, a personal touch - if done well - will get your newsletter remembered and enhance your personal image as an expert. Some people choose reveal something about their personal lives (maybe they play golf of bought a new car) or about their families.

Include offers and calls to action. You should give people a reason to act now, rather than wait, because if they wait, it's likely they'll do nothing. So, for example, consider a special offer for that month. Putting in a different offer each month will also help you track the effectiveness of your newsletter - you'll easily see who comes in.

Send it out regularly. Many businesses send a newsletter out every month - a regular publishing schedule helps make your newsletter part of the daily lives of your clients.

Probably the most common mistake novice company newsletter publishers make is this: writing about the wrong person.

What do I mean by that? Simply, that it's not enough (and it's not effective) to write about you, your company and your product or service. The fact is this: while you are no doubt incredibly interesting to you, unfortunately, no one else will share your interest.

Instead, they'll just say "so what?"

So while you'll want to include information about who you are and what you do in some way, the bulk of the newsletter should be about topics that will interest the reader.

This doesn't mean you have to steer away completely from writing about your product or service. But instead of writing about the features of what you offer (saying, basically, how great you are) write about how your product or service will benefit the reader of the newsletter.

Here's how to do it.

Imagine, for example, you run a dance school. You might be tempted to write about your qualifications, the capacity of your studio and how many years you have been in business.

They're all important facts. But what readers really want to know is things such as:

* the health benefits of dance lessons (and how going to a class regularly with you will help them)
* how to exercise safely (and how you always warm up in a class to avoid injuries)
* success stories that they can emulate (how one of your former students is now in a professional company)

You see, each of these articles is about something that is likely to interest your reader. But you also get to promote your services at the same time.

There are several benefits to doing it this way:

1) You interest the reader right away, making it more likely they will read the story
2) Your article won't seem like an ad and it won't seem like you are bragging
3) You offer a real, genuine benefit to using your service, and back that up by proof that you deliver what you promise
4) You demonstrate your expertise in a non-threatening and no-pressure way, building credibility as a provider of that service rather than just a vendor of that service

Follow these guidelines and you'll create a newsletter that people want to read - and that will make it more effective overall.

There are 2 reasons why a client might want to read your newsletter. 1) Because he or she is interested in your product and service and wants to read articles relating to that product or service; 2) He or she finds your newsletter so fascinating anyway that they will read articles that don't directly relate to your product and service because...well...your newsletter is so damn good!

That's not to say you will want to steer clear of writing articles that relate to what you have to offer. You should in fact devote a large portion of your newsletter to these. After all, your reader is likely to be interested in these articles, and you'll be able to benefit because you will be educating readers to the advantages of what you offer and then slip in 'reasons to buy' (hang on for a later post on this topic) within the articles.

But sometimes, what you do isn't endlessly fascinating. There is, for example, a finite attention span people might have for articles about tax rules, even if they are well-written and focus on the needs and wants of the reader.

So it's perfectly OK to include other content, as long as it's still interesting.

Here's some ideas for other content you can put in your newsletter:

* 'Tidbits' of information - trivia that intrigues, entertains and educates
* 'How to' information - useful 'lifehacks' that save people time or teach them to do something they didn't already know
* Games and puzzles - very popular, and a great way to make sure your newsletter is kept, at least for a few hours or days
* Articles on topics that are indirectly related to your product or service - if, for example, you are a tax accountant, you might wish to include articles on savings products

My "Ready to Go Newsletters", which will launch early next year, will be including these sort of articles because they make for great reading, even if they are not directly related to any particular product or service.

The key thing is: make all your articles interesting. Make sure they have headlines that grab readers (more on this in a later post), that they are written in a lively and interesting way, and that they are always about the reader.

If you do all this, you'll create a product that becomes valuable in itself. Something that people look forward to. And something that you as a business will want to be associated with.

What a great way to bring your message into hundreds or thousands of homes!

For the most part, people buy from people and not from companies.

That's something many salespeople (and many people who don't consider themselves salespeople but nevertheless run a business) already know.

After all, isn't it true that you build a relationship with some clients...and it's these clients who go on to become your best customers?

So that's why I always say it's important to inject some personality into your newsletter.

Now...I don't mean you should splash your picture and your name everywhere. Don't forget, readers are interested in themselves, not in you.

But it does mean you should avoid creating a sterile and corporate publication just because you think it might look more professional that way.

So how do you inject personality into your newsletter? Here are some ideas:

1) Include your picture somewhere. Many people already know you from visiting you, so why not continue that face recognition on the printed page? People often respond to faces quicker and easier than they do to names. After all, why do you think most magazines put faces on their covers? Because people can relate to a face. Faces sell.

2) Include a personal column. Write something about your life - your likes and your hates. Don't go overboard and rant, just give them a taster. The kind of stuff you might share anyway with a client you meet face to face.

3) Include some opinion. If you think something's a good idea, say so! And if you think something's a bad idea, say so too! As a service or product provider people come to you for advice, so don't be afraid to give it to them, particularly if you find that in the face-to-face world people respect and act on your advice.

Personality is important, but it's vital to do it well. Write with integrity. Don't be someone other than the real you.

And don't overdo it. Remember that people are interested in themselves, not in you.