8 Ways To Increase The Effectiveness Of Your Company's Newsletter

A handy way to maintain ongoing contact with your customers is your newsletter, and it’s one of the easiest and most effective sales generators you can use. It arrives in your customers’ mailbox on a regular basis. If written and designed well, it is informative and appreciated.

Customers begin to look forward to this regular message from their supplier. It serves as a reminder, even an incentive, for them to buy from you. Here are eight ways to increase the effectiveness of your company’s newsletter.

1. Keep it objective

This is not the place for advertising slogans or bombast. To make this very effective, the formula is simple – put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

If you are having a sale, announce it as if it were a news event. Avoid superlatives and over-promoting something. If the newsletter looks to the reader like just another advertisement, you lose your credibility as well as your customer’s attention.

2. Use four-color

It looks better, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot. You can easily layout the masthead in Adobe Photoshop or PaintShop Pro and then print a year’s supply of just the masthead in four-color.

Then, each month or each quarter, simply print the articles in black ink and have a four-color newsletter for little more than the price of one.

3. Keep it simple

Four pages work best (a single sheet of 11×17 inches folded once). Make it easy and fun to read, with lots of brief (four- or five-paragraph) articles, photos, cartoons, charts, and graphs.

Avoid over-layouting your background, and make sure everything is readable. You can play with cool, new fonts available today in terms of titles but when it comes to your article body, use the default Times New Romans, Arial, or anything simple.

4. Speak directly to your customers

Feature a column from the president of your company. Mostly it can be placed at the back of the frontpage cover or in the first few page (if your newsletter has many pages).

In the column, summarize each of the articles that appear in the newsletter, perhaps a paragraph on each.

5. Make it look like a newspaper

Divide the pages into columns. Use a standard newsprint type-style below a masthead with a clever name. If possible, use the name of your firm in the masthead.

6. Create testimonials from satisfied customers

Set aside a small space where you can mention the testimonials of your previous or existing satisfied customers. You can also use Case Studies–for example, how your company solved a particularly sticky problem.

They help to build your image and credibility, and your customers will enjoy seeing their name in print.

7. Make it fun

Page two of your newsletter should be your fun page. Use a joke box (keep them clean, though), a silly quote, or a “Did You Know…” column with fun facts of trivial information.

Things like celebrity birthdays, the population of Katmandu, the cost of a Big Mac in Moscow, probably about top gaming laptops from that Videogame blog, or any unusual world records. Buried among the four or five factoids is one pertaining to your business (such as “Did You Know XYZ Company has the only fully digital gimcrack in town?”)

8. Do not forget your contact section

The purpose of your newsletter is to boost your company’s reputation, leave good remarks to people and making it popular. With this, do not forget to place your contact information, such as:

• complete business address
• telephone or fax number
• email address
• website

This section may be best placed on the back cover, specifically on the lower portion. Your business information also needs to be clear and visible, but should not be too big to the extent that it feels like they’re all over the place.

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