7 Ways to Boost Response to Your Newsletter
I know from experience one of your biggest questions is likely to be: How do I squeeze more out of my newsletter? How can I get more response? The good news is, there’s lots you can do. Just doing one extra thing will help. So here we go: 1. The personal paragraph. I’ve written about…
Newsletters with Passion
Sometimes I?get this overwhelming urge. I?want to grab a business owner by the shoulders and give him a good, hard shake. “Why the heck,” I’d say through clenched teeth, “are you in this business anyway?” Once they’ve got over their shock (and probably called their lawyer), they might start to answer the question. Because deep down, hidden…
How to Use Newsletters to Bring in New Business
I was asked by a member of my insurance newsletters service last week about the best way to use newsletters to bring in new business. Here’s what I will tell him. Of course, this applies to any business – not just insurance. Why Newsletters Work to Bring in New Business Newsletters are most famously used…
The Long Tail of Newsletters
I often hear stories that clients consider amazing. It goes something like this: I sent my newsletter to this person six months ago. And today they called me! Can you believe they kept the newsletter all that time and then got in touch? Well, yes, I can. If the newsletter is good. Here’s the thing:…
Why Quality beats Quantity in Newsletter Subscribers
I was listening to an interesting webinar from Vertical Response (they’re the guys I’ve partnered with for my email newsletter service) today. Several things came out of it worth noting – I’ll blog about them all in the coming days. One of the stand-out points was about list size. The bottom line on list size…
Good and Bad Email Newsletter Campaigns
At least twice a week I have a conversation with a client or potential client about who they can sign up to receive their email newsletter. This conversation most often occurs with people who are new Realtors, insurance agents or mortgage brokers because they don’t yet have a list of past clients. Can they sign…
The Best Way to Send Out Email Newsletters
A common question I receive from people interested in my real estate, mortgage and insurance customer newsletters is whether they can send them using their own email software rather than the hosted service I offer. (With a hosted service, you upload your email list to a website, which looks after the design, list management and…
Why 2009 is the Year of the Customer Relationship
I was tweeting with a friend (yes, I’m on Twitter now – follow me!) who had some exciting news to share. It was a wonderful way for her to start the new year. We agreed that 2009 is going to be a very good year for people with enough get-up-and-go to take the bold action…
Forget the Pulitzer. Does Your Newsletter Pass the Bathroom Jury?
This post contains a concept some readers might find distasteful. Reader discretion is advised. Frankly, I don’t care how many awards your newsletter might win for its design or its writing. This is the thing: there’s one criterion that is far more important: is it bathroomable? Do you customers take your newsletter into the bathroom?…
What Not to Put in a Newsletter
Ding! Here arrives a new email. Ooh, a newsletter! I like those! It’s from a software company – A Letter from the CEO, no less. And that’s where things start to go wrong. Let me give you some quotes: “A New Corporate Strategy” “We have established a new corporate strategy designed to meet the continuously…
Why Customer Service Beats Low Prices
If you wanted any more evidence that now – despite the rough economy – is not the time to go cutting price, look at the results of the latest poll published by Marketing Sherpa (see chart at end of this post). It shows that while vendors believe price is the most important factor in customer…
Customer Newsletters: The 7 Deadly Sins
If you’re about to create your newsletter or are having someone else do it for you (perhaps using a writer/designer or a newsletter company) check out the following mistakes you’ll want to avoid. 1) From Corporate HQ: Your newsletter doesn’t need to look like it was created by the design department of a Fortune 500…
Use Coupons to Boost Your Company Newsletter Response
A subscriber to my newsletter for mortgage brokers sent me her version of the newsletter today. She’d customized it to include a coupon that gives $100 off closing costs to any clients that conclude financing with her. Great idea. Not only do coupons make it more likely your client will keep the newsletter but they…
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…
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,…
An excellent example of a customer newsletter
I’d like to show you what I think is an excellent example of someone using a commercially available, ready-to-use newsletter and customizing it to make it even more powerful. As you may know, I operate a service that provides ready-made newsletters for real estate agents and other professionals. The newsletters are delivered to my subscribers…
The newsletter spectrum
There’s so such thing as a typical newsletter, of course. It’s a spectrum, from down-and-dirty, straight from the kitchen table written by your spouse…to glossy, designed by Madison Avenue and crafted by a team of high-paid wordsmiths Both ends of the spectrum have their place, because you want a newsletter that matches the clients you…
Don’t forget to recycle your newsletter content
If you’ve written articles for your newsletter, don’t waste them. You can use them again in a variety of formats. Then you’ll get much more mileage out of everything you write. Try using them… On your website: you’ll add several search-engine friendly pages to your website that will attract more viewers and keep them sticking…
Elements of a successful newsletter: 7 – Pictures
This is the seventh in a series of posts about the elements of a successful newsletter. 7. Pictures While a picture may say a thousand words, the pictures you see in some newsletters — unfortunately — say a thousand words of gibberish. Why are so many pictures not up to scratch? First, it’s difficult to…