Publish A Newletter
Why | How | List Management
On one thing, the experts agree—follow-up
is the single most important and least used marketing strategy.
A promotional newsletter featuring trade news, customer success
stories, and information about your products or services is an
excellent way to establish and grow your relationship with customers.
In addition, a promotional
newsletter can help you build credibility and enhance your image
with potential and existing customers. By providing useful information
in a professional format, your readers will perceive you as a
knowledgeable person in your field. They will also appreciate
any information that can be helpful and/or save them money.
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Creating A Newsletter:
Creation of your newsletter
should follow four stages. The two stages requiring the
most effort are:
The remaining stages, once
your newsletter is put together, are not as complex and, therefore,
less time-consuming:
Planning a Newsletter:
Producing your newsletter,
especially the first issue, will require a significant commitment
of time on your part. It's important to remember that each subsequent
issue will be much simpler and faster to produce. You will need
to address the following issues during this stage:
Decide on who should receive
your newsletter.
Anyone who might benefit
by or appreciate the information it contains or who might be motivated
to purchase your product or service after reading it should receive
your newsletter. This would include:
- Current customers. Those
businesses or individuals currently purchasing your product or
service.
- Former customers. Those
businesses or individuals who used to purchase your product but
no longer do so.
- New prospects. Those
businesses or individuals who might be likely to use your product
or service now.
- Old prospects. Those
businesses or individuals in the past you thought might have
been candidates to use your product or service.
Anyone with whom you want
to maintain a good image should also receive your newsletter.
This would include:
- Vendors. Other businesses
that provide you with a product or service.
- Financial backers. Those
who invest or might invest in your business.
- Colleagues. Those who
work in your industry or business area.
- Editors at trade publications.
They might read your newsletter and decide to include some of
the information from it in their publication. This will give
you free exposure to your market.
Begin Building Your
Mailing List:
You have many sources for
building your mailing list:
- Use current and former
customers as well as current and former prospects.
- Include anyone who routinely
inquires about your product. This would include anyone who phones,
writes or emails requesting additional information about your
product.
- Collect business cards
at trade shows. This is a great opportunity to build your list
of prospects. Make a sign that says: "To receive your free,
one-year subscription to our newsletter, drop your business card
or fill out a form."
- Get names of editors
at trade publications. You may go to the library and research
these publications. The names of editors are listed inside the
magazine.
- Buy a mailing list. Locate
companies that specialize in creating mailing lists. Or, contact
your professional trade association and inquire about the cost
of purchasing their mailing list. Trade magazines often sell
their subscriber list as well.
- Add a "subscribe"
field to your web site. Most professional newsletter services
will provide you with simple HTML to copy and paste into your
web site. If you elect to use the List Management
tool provide with all NetCo Services' hosting packages, you may
also have a working "subscribe" feature added to your
web site. Contact NetCo
Services Support for details.
Remember to carefully target
your market so your mailing list represents those individuals
who are most likely to purchase your product or service.
Determine Your Budget:
Early on in the planning
process, you'll need to establish a budget from which to work.
A preliminary estimate of a budget will drive other key decisions
you'll make regarding your newsletter. For instance, the size
of your budget will impact:
- The number of people
you will send it to also known as your circulation.
- The frequency that you
publish your newsletter.
- Whether you purchase
mailing lists, lease them, or construct your own.
- The resources available
to you for designing, programming, and sending your newsletter.
If you have a modest budget, you may not be able to afford professional
assistance in these areas.
Determine How Often
You Will Produce Your Newsletter:
You may have enough material
to fill a newsletter once a month or once every three months.
But material or not, you need to assess the time you can devote
to producing the newsletter. Only you can realistically evaluate
how much material and time you have to devote to creating your
newsletter.
As a rule of thumb, four
times a year is a minimum. Why? In order for your newsletter to
fulfill the goals of enhanced image and increased sales, it needs
to be a consistent information vehicle. You want your readers
to be familiar with it when it arrives in their email. Winter,
Spring, Summer, and Fall mailings will establish its regularity,
and your readers will come to look forward to its arrival. Producing
your publication less than four times a year will not be an effective
use of this promotional vehicle.
Take a few moments to determine
your newsletter's frequency. Don't forget to factor in the time
constraints on you.
Decide on the Content
of Your Newsletter:
There are two primary ways
to generate the content of your newsletter:
Reuse existing material. The benefit of a promotional newsletter
is that in addition to promoting your products and/or services,
you can virtually reuse other existing materials such as speeches,
press releases, company backgrounds, and annual reports.
- Call the appropriate
trade associations to inquire about information that they can
provide.
- Contact specific companies
yourself and have them send you their press releases.
- Use on-line services
i.e. Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc. There is a wealth of information
that these services provide.
- Also, utilize your local
reference librarian. They may show you the vast amount of resources
available to you at your local library. In some cases you may
have to get approval from an author to reprint a story. In other
cases, proper sourcing will suffice, but it's best to check with
the source first.
Make a list of written
material you have right now that you can use to create your content:
Develop and write your
own articles. There
are many kinds of stories and articles you can use to fill your
newsletter and make it a valuable and interesting source of information
for your customers and potential customers. You may also solicit
articles from colleagues. This is good PR for them, as well. It's
important to remember that while you want to promote your business
or product, you need to make your newsletter worthwhile enough
so that it doesn't appear to be a long advertisement.
Designing a Newsletter:
Now that you have your
articles written and/or selected products to promote, it's time
to put them into a newsletter form. This is called layout literally
laying the content into the newsletter format. Layout is the most
fundamental aspect of the design process. It's quite acceptable
for your newsletter to have a simple design. Remember, you're
trying to increase awareness of your product or business so the
key design element is consistency. From newsletter to newsletter
the look and layout should be the same so readers will come to
recognize and expect it.
Do you need to hire a designer?
Maybe not. If you choose to use a professional service i.e. Constant Contact, their programs make
designing a newsletter a fairly simple (and even fun) process.
If you are seriously committed to the idea of publishing a newsletter
it may be more cost-effective in the long run to consider using
one of these programs.
The look and general content
of your newsletter may not be totally established with the first
issue. Don't worry. Usually after the third or fourth issue, you
will have a better idea of how your newsletter will appear, how
much space you have, where the regular columns will appear. Give
your newsletter a chance to evolve. If you feel that you're still
having trouble establishing the look and image of your newsletter
after the fourth issue, you may want to consider consulting a
professional designer for guidance.
Proofreading Your Newsletter:
Once you have completed
the content and it's laid out in your computer, you should proof
it. A trick of the trade is to proof your copy by reading it backwards.
This forces you to read each work separately, rather than scanning
groups of words as you might do in reading.
Another rule you should
always follow after you've proofed your own work is to have at
least one other person review the copy. It simply isn't realistic
to think you can catch all of your own mistakes. Errors in your
text will diminish all the good work you've done on your newsletter,
so try to catch them all.
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How To Send A Newsletter:
If you elect not to use
a professional service, you may use NetCo Services' List Management
program to send your newsletter. The List Management section on
the Site Management screen allows you to create and manage mailing
lists for your web site. Login to your online control panel at
http://www.YourDomain.com/siteadmin/.
To add a mailing list:
1. Go to the Site Management
screen.
2. Click List Management.
3. Click Add Mailing List.
4. Enter a name for the mailing list, then enter the email addresses
of the members of the list.
5. If there are existing users you want to include in the list,
select them (one at a time) from the pull-down menu, and then
click the bent, down-pointing arrow to add the selected user to
the list.
6. You can specify aliases for the mailing list by entering them
in the "Aliases" area. (You don't need to include the
domain in the aliases.)
7. When you're finished, click Confirm New Mailing List.
To modify a mailing list,
go to the Site Management screen, click List Management, click
the pencil icon for the mailing list, modify the information as
needed, and then click Confirm Modify.
To delete a mailing list,
go to the Site Management screen, click List Management, click
the trash icon for the mailing list, and then click OK to confirm
that you want to delete the mailing list.
Auto subscribe and unsubscribe
features may also be added to your web site. Contact NetCo
Services Support for details.
To send a newsletter using
the List Management tool, address the newsletter to NameOfMailingList@www.YourDomain.com.
This will automatically send the newsletter to everyone on your
list.
Please conform with
the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
1. Requires that your
have a working unsubscribe system that makes it easy for recipients
to unsubscribe opt out of receiving your e-mails.
2. Requires e-mailers to include their postal mailing address
in the message.
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