Stay Connected with Customer Newsletters

An opt-in email newsletter is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to maintain relationships with customers and leads (or prospective customers). They're cheap because you design, publish, and distribute it all electronically, and they're effective because unlike print ads which get thrown out and direct emails which get deleted, newsletters work because people really read them.

Even the name news-letter implies that it contains something useful and informative that isn't trying to sell something. Therefore, to use newsletters successfully to stay connected with your customers, start by giving them what they expect:  News! Information! Something useful!

Include in your newsletters interesting articles that pertain to your industry.  Here are some suggestions:

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to write interesting and informative articles related to your products or services. And if you can't do it yourself, hire a freelancer to do it for you. There's no reason you can't produce as engaging and content-rich a newsletter as your competitors.

Of course, we all know that newsletters are a sales tactic - in business everything is sales. And for a newsletter to be as beneficial to you as it is to your readers, it must contain somewhere in it, a call to action. A call to action is exactly what it sounds like - an enthusiastic invitation to the reader to do something, be it:

You may also wish to offer coupons in your newsletters, increasing the value customers get out of subscribing to your newsletter. When people know that special bargains and discounts exist that are only made available to subscribers of your newsletters, you'll be pleased and amazed to see how many of them subscribe.

The subscription alone is a revered conversion, for email newsletters are an opt-in service, meaning that you can only send them to people who request or consent to have your newsletter sent to them. When people make this request of you, or give you this permission, they are willingly - maybe even eagerly - adding their contact information to your database. These opt-in subscribers are your best leads.

To get subscribers to your newsletter, you certainly want to have a signup box on at least one page of your website, preferably the landing page. You can also have subscribing to your newsletter be a call to action that you make at the end of your articles in your article marketing campaigns. And you can submit your newsletter to various free newsletter directories to which people surfing the web for your subject matter will be directed.

Although people have requested (or at least opted-in) to your newsletter, you'll still need to make it attention-grabbing and engaging, interesting and compelling enough for them to actually read it. This starts with a catchy title. Spend a bit of time coming up with a title for your newsletter that you can imagine standing alone, holding its own, there in the subject line of your subscribers' inboxes with all the rest of their email. People get a lot of email. And even those who agreed to receive your newsletter at one time may skip over it, delete it, procrastinate reading it indefinitely, or worst of all opt-out - if you don't keep their attention.

Think of every issue of your newsletter as an opportunity to renew your subscribers' interest in staying in touch with your company or organization. Other ways to continually captivate your newsletter readers' interest are to keep it informative, keep it relevant, and keep it brief. Add value wherever you can. And always remember to include at least one call to action, for as informative, useful, and newsy as your newsletter may be, it is nothing if not ultimately a way to make more sales.