Could a Customer Newsletter Actually Make You Money?
People tend to think of newsletters as a marketing expense. (Of course, marketing shouldn’t be thought of as an expense at all. It’s an investment – at least it is if you do the kind of marketing that allows you to track the results.) But it is possible to create a customer newsletter that actually…
The Best Kind of Newsletter
I lost a newsletter client today. Nothing new about that. The one-month free trial for my real estate newsletter encourages people to sign up and kick the tires, and some decide not to continue. Others take what they can for free and never have any intention of paying. Quite normal when you make an offer…
How to Use Customer Newsletters to Nurture the People Who Really Matter
Seth wrote an interesting post today about targeted traffic to websites versus untargeted traffic: it’s the focused traffic you want to capture; the rest you don’t care about. Quite right. And it’s useful to show how customer newsletters can achieve the same goal: bringing targeted buyers into your business. Let’s face it, although newsletters are…
Make Your Newsletter Captions Work For You
If you use pictures in your newsletter, don’t neglect their captions. Captions are one of the most-read elements on the page, and you don’t need to restrict them to just identifying people and places. Because captions are so frequently read by people browsing your newsletter, they can also help entice readers to tackle the article…
A Handyman’s Newsletter Question
Interesting question about customer newsletters on the MarketingProfs Knowledge Exchange site today: My question is twofold. I would like to start a client/customer newsletter and I’m looking for some topic ideas, 2) Would it be ok to have a ‘how I did it’ column say from the CEO….recounting how he did it. Check what I…
Calling all Printers: Are You a Commodity?
One of the subscribers to my general customer newsletter is a commercial printer. He says his customers love getting the newsletter he sends out. Now, the printing industry is in danger of becoming – if it hasn’t already – a commodity. People shop for printers by price, for the most part. And as we know,…
A Goldmine of Headline Inspiration
I’ve said many times before that headlines are one of the most important elements in your newsletter because they act as salesmen for your articles. Writing a good headline will increase the chances of your article being read. Newspapers spend a lot of effort on headlines. They have editors who specialize in writing them. The…
Building a Stalagmite
Something I’ve learned since I started this blog – and also since I started my real estate newsletters business – is that building trust takes time. But taking the time to build that trust has enormous rewards. As Seth says today, in his post Drip, drip, drip goes the Twit: "Publishing your ideas… in books,…
What Can You Learn from Newspapers?
I had the honor today of having a post published on Copyblogger. It’s about how writers of blogs can learn from newspaper reporters and editors, but the information can just as easily be applied to newsletters.
Is Your Newsletter Hanging Out With the Right People?
If you’ve got children, you’re no doubt anxious to make sure they aren’t hanging out with a bad crowd. And if you are buying a house, you want to be certain it’s not in a bad neighborhood. The same goes for your newsletter: is it hanging out with the right people? When every newsletter costs…
How to Cut Through the Noise and Connect with Customers
If you send out a newsletter, take a good look at the content. What are the themes of your articles? Who is the focus of your articles? What are you trying to achieve with your articles? Are you providing value in your articles that will improve your subscribers’ lives? That final question is the most…
Issuu: A Way to Put Your Print Newsletter Online
If you’ve visited the website belonging to a glossy magazine, you’ve probably seen an online facsimile of the magazine – a little widget they use to allow you to "flip" pages of the real magazine…but online. That kind of technology was quite expensive. But now there’s a website, called Issuu, that is doing the same…