Tips for Writing an Effective Newsletter
 

*Much of the information in this article was compiled from a series of articles found at http://www.ezinearticles.com

Summer’s almost over and people are starting to make the mental transition from the “vacation” or “lazy days of summer” mode, into the “back to school” and/or “back to work” mode. Now is a great time to evaluate your Stampin’ Up! business, and take a look at the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.

In principle, we all know that a solid, strong customer base is essential to the long-term success of your business. What does that mean in practice? How do we go about turning the contacts we’ve generated from our website, and from workshops and other events into customers? How do we go about turning one-time buyers into long-term customers and loyal supporters?

The first thing you need to do is to keep your name out there in front of your contacts & customers. You also need to establish and increase your credibility as the “expert” so that your customers & contacts immediately think of you when they need help with stamping and scrapping tips, techniques & project ideas. Although there are a number of different marketing strategies you can & should employ, the easiest by far is an email newsletter.

Newsletters are a great way of getting repeat and new business because they prevent your customers and contacts from forgetting about you and the services that you provide, they allow you to introduce new services, products and/or promotions to your customers in a non-invasive and consistent way, they help you establish yourself as THE place to go for ideas and information, and they provide an easy way for your customers to forward on your information to their friends & family – i.e. to new potential customers.

So how do you go about writing a newsletter?

The content of your newsletter requires careful thought and planning. The first and foremost thing you need to keep in the forefront of your mind when developing the content of your newsletter is “what’s in it for them?” Nothing will earn the delete or unsubscribe key more quickly than if the focus is on what you want instead of on what you can do for your customers. Although your goal may be to sell more Stampin’ Up! products and fill your classes and events, your customer’s goal may be to get ideas, to learn something new, to have a need met, or to be entertained. Follow the tips below to help you write an effective newsletter that will help you achieve your goals while getting your customers excited to receive your newsletters.

1. Be personal. While you don’t need to share your whole life’s story, experts agree that if you share something personal about your life, it helps your clients and prospects begin to know, like, and trust you. People might be willing to share their email address with you, but will want to know you better before giving you more information. This is one way to accomplish that.
2. Consider how and what you want/need to inform your customers & prospects about. Do you have a product or service that needs to be promoted? What is the reason behind the offer e.g. seasonal promotions, new product launches, special events, important announcements etc. While it’s important to keep this in mind when developing your newsletter, a word of caution: don’t go overboard with advertisements! Although your primary purpose for having a newsletter may be so that you can market your products and classes, keep in mind that your readers subscribed for content. Just as newspapers and magazines are careful to balance ads and content, you need to do the same. If subscribers feel like your newsletter is nothing more than an advertising sheet they will quickly become unsubscribers.
3. Content, content, content. Give your newsletter readers something to read. Provide interesting, informative articles that make them excited and make them look forward to seeing your newsletter in their inbox. Offer your readers information that they want, they need or they need and don’t know it yet. A good rule of thumb which I learned from my business coach John Sanpietro, is to aim for 70% information and 30% solicitation.
4. Add some graphics to help break up the text, but keep the graphics simple. Too many images and high resolution images can clog inboxes and take forever to open. Graphics and even white space help break up the text and make it easier to read.
5. Get readers involved. Social networks have become popular because they allow users to interact with each other, creating an environment where everyone’s opinion counts. These same feelings will work with your newsletter. Get readers excited by offering them the chance to provide their feedback and look for ways you can incorporate that feedback into future newsletters. This is essential for making people feel like they're really part of something. An example of a way you could do this would be to have a question and answer section in your newsletter and encourage your readers to send in their questions.
6. Have incentives or contests. Get your readers excited about receiving your newsletter by offering them an incentive to get excited about. Offer prizes to subscribers each month. For example, offer a free class as a monthly prize if they submit a sample of something they’ve made with their Stampin’ Up! product. Include a link to your blog or website where they can click to find out how to enter the drawing as well as learn more about your awesome classes. Not only will your readers look forward to the prizes, you will end up making sales to, or generating class sign ups from some of the people reading the description.
7. A call-to-action is essential. Be sure to invite your readers to take the next step. Whether this is to purchase one of your products, or sign up for a class, you need to make sure your customers and prospects know what to do next by encouraging them to call you, email you or visit your website or blog.
8. Contact information: ALWAYS include your full contact information at the end of each issue. You can put up a virtual business card, or just include it like an email signature. Make sure your recipients have several ways to get a hold of you.

As you follow these steps, your newsletters will become fresh, exciting and relevant to your customers…you’ll see your readers opening your emails as soon as they arrive. When you get to this point, you’ll start to see your sales and class attendances go up. However, if you avoid these steps you may start to see your emails being deleted rather than read, and you may even start to see a lot more unsubscribe messages!