Project Cake » The Potential Behind eNewsletters – Part 2: Ways to Improve a Current Newsletter

The Potential Behind eNewsletters – Part 2: Ways to Improve a Current Newsletter

If you already have a newsletter then you’ll know the potential behind why getting all the factors involved right is paramount to success.

From my experience, there are 8 key factors you need to work on to get your newsletter delivering results:

Content & layout
Presentation
Style of writing
Headlines
Using questions
Testimonials
Subscribes/unsubscribes
Final Check

1. Content & Layout – The Driving Force

Good content is informative, believable, memorable, persuasive, valuable, well written and exact. Think about these points below and how they relate to your current newsletter…

- What may be obvious to you may be totally unknown to your prospect

- Tell them about products or services or both, and the value it will bring to them

- You want the layout and content to be eye catching so the reader opens its and responds

- The top portion of a newsletter, or banner segment catches the readers eye best

- Readers on the Internet scan information; look for short distinct messages that prompt them to look deeper down the page

- Get specific: yourself, the way of the business, products and services

- Content trumps sales: use ads and/or promotional copy but supporting them with detail is critical to effectively evaluate claims and make decisions. It’s those details that make good newsletters valuable and worthwhile

- Think about the risk of losing objectivity i.e. pushing your own interests at the expense of the customer’s interests. Sometimes it helps to bring in an objective outsider to give perspective

2. Presentation

Here are the main areas and what you need to look for…

Return Address
- Must work
- Must remain the same for each issue
- Its not recommended to change the sender line

Subject Line
- Keep it clean and simple: include the newsletters name, type of content, major benefit of issue, issue date and number e.g.

[Health Focus] Exclusive Report: Dealing with Stress Effectively 05/03 #239

Masthead
- This provides information about the newsletter and publisher as well as contact information

Table of Contents
- Present the content of your newsletter so readers can pick and choose what they want to read
- Provide anchor tags so readers can skip directly to articles without scrolling

Actual Content
- Each article should include the authors name, photo and email address
- Short synopsis and links to further information

Promotion
- People who read the articles will view us as experts, so you must provide sound advice

3. Style of Writing

Education
The state of mind of the customer when leading to your site is crucial in determining whether or not they will buy. Educated prospects will come to the site pre-qualified and ready to be sold

Endorsement
The content of the newsletter must be good and not just a sales pitch. The email must gain respect of the reader, once respect has been established; they will be more likely to listen to what we have to say

Entertainment
People will not be bored into buying. Humour is only good up to a point; a fatal error is to include humour in such a ways as to not specifically move the sales process forward. Entertainment must compliment and support the sale.

Functionality
The style must be very simple, easy to read and understand what the message is.

4. Headlines

You can go from losing money to making a lot of money, just by changing a few words.

- The newsletter must have excellent headlines

- Make the headline create a vivid picture and/or stimulate a strong feeling

- Killer headlines stir emotions in the direction of buying. You must get the prospect interested in reading

- Good headlines convey excitement, pride, hope for the future, a vivid scene and stimulates strong feelings in the readers mind

- The headline must also make the prospect instantly understand the most important benefit to them

5. Using Questions

If your email is more of a sales pitch, try using questions to enhance the way the user will read the email…

Opening question
Something that is relevant and important, something that the prospect needs or wants.

- If you ask such a question the first thing the prospect will think of is “What is it?” You can then begin to articulate how your product or service can solve the need posed by the question

Questions that keep them involved
These will capture attention.

- Questions that are logical, orderly and sequential will lead the prospect forward toward the inevitable conclusion to purchase the product or service

- Never say something if you can ask it instead

Closing Questions
More vital as they gain commitment to action.

- Convey a confidence that the prospect will say yes or agree to the sale

- You must include the benefit that the prospect will get

- Compelling closing questions diffuse the tension that may creep in at the moment of truth

6. Testimonials

The best source of new business is almost always a prospect that has been referred to you by a friend, a trusted business advisor OR clear and compelling testimonials.

You must include testimonials and case studies of people and their real life scenarios in the copy, putting this in the copy with recommendations from people will seem like the people they know and trust.

7. Subscribes / Unsubscribes

There was a motion a while back that double opt-in was not necessary any more, I would tend to go against this and still get the recipient to reply to an auto generated email once they initially sign up. The double opt-in ensures you have the recipient’s complete approval to send them emails.

If users decide to unsubscribe from your newsletter, this should be a very quick, simple and painless process.

- There should ALWAYS be an unsubscribe link in any message you send out

- Most good email marketing software provides a 1-click unsubscribe service

- Once a user has unsubscribed, you could redirect them to a web page with a simple form for asking them why they unsubscribed and if they have any feedback for you. This can provide useful and insightful comments on your service.