Forum Moderators: not2easy
What should be the tone of voice? Ideally what should be included and what should not be in a company newsletter?
Any views?
is there any specific format that should be followed..
We usually have three to four sections:
- new clients (we put in a blurb and any testimonials we have)
- a feature article (related informational piece that help clients make informed decisions)
- something funny (we are in the translation business, so we usually include a translation joke there)
- sometimes depending on availability, we add stats (related to international business and global web).
We find plain text to work better than html...but it puts more pressure on writing good content because people don't have the visual elements to distract them.
HP
Make sure your newsletter is targeted and offers genuine value. For instance, mine is targeted to small business owners who want to learn how to market more effectively with the written word. It shouldn't be all about what your business is doing, but rather it should have really useful content for the reader that supports your position as an expert provider. You can include special promotions and offers, but these should only make up a small percent of your content.
When you're ready to launch your newsletter, invite people to subscribe and include a link to your sign-up page. To build your subscriber list, you can offer a free downloadable report or something that relates to your industry. Before launching my e-zine, I bought Alexandria Brown's information product, "Boost Business with Your Own Ezine." It cost about $200, but was worth every penny because following her system, I was up and running very quickly, and avoided lots of stupid mistakes.
also, in the long run, isn't it difficult to keep the interest level up....a newsletter that is sent every week may not be as interesting to read ....as compared to one that is sent once a month....simply because there is more to write in a span of one month for a small company?
any views
My company used to produce three newsletters a week that were sent out on the same day. We eventually had to stop doing it as the person compiling them had too much other work to do.
Thanks.
My biggest newsletter goes out once a week if there's enough to put in it (there usually is), and it's a simple text-only affair the first line of which is a link to my web site with a more fancy version on it. It's a product based newsletter, so I give just one or two sentences on the new product and a link through to the main page. Typically, there are about 10 new products per newsletter so there's a fairly amount of text. This is aimed at consumers, so I think that more than 1 per week would be too much.
My secondary newsletter is much smaller in circulation terms, but it goes out each time there's a new product, with the same format of a few sentences of text plus a link to a full article, usually with product images and specifications. This is aimed at professionals, so I try to get these out as quickly as possible, sometimes with more than one per day.
Personally, I think it's important to get people to visit the site rather than put all the content in the newsletter. That way you've got much more of a chance of getting some revenue out of them. Putting an (enhanced) copy of the newsletter on your site may also help pull in some search engine traffic.
Write the kind of thing your favourite mag / site writes.
And make it interesting.
I've read lastminute.com emails. Just becuase they are interesting.
