Creating a Successful Business Newsletter

A newsletter is a great way to promote your business or service, and if you’re a budding entrepreneur it can go a long way toward establishing you as an expert in your field.

A newsletter also provides you with a way to communicate with clients who may not regularly visit your website about new articles or features; this alone is reason enough to publish a newsletter as the benefit is so substantial. Of course newsletters have the additional benefit of generating revenue should you choose to sell ads or charge a subscription fee.

Following are a few tips and suggestions to help you take the first steps toward launching a successful newsletter.

• Your brand is your business identity so it’s important to be consistent in the message you’re delivering. Always include your logo and tagline on the newsletter design.

• Give some thought to the visual message you want to send with the design of your newsletter. For example, bright colors, cute fonts, smiley faces and cartoons may work just fine for a kids-focused company, but not so much if your business is say a medical supply service.

• If you’re publishing an online or email newsletter you’ll want to include links to bring your readers full circle back to your website for additional information or a particular call to action. You may even want to create a special offer to track response.

• People enjoy incentives, and they don’t have to be expensive or complicated. For example a free giveaway or coupons off the next purchase to those who subscribe.

• Be realistic about the length of your newsletter. It may be tempting at first to provide a lot of information to attract new subscribers, especially if you’re charging a subscription fee, but the question is can you realistically maintain that level of production without compromising the quality of your content.

• Depending on your type of business or service, consider creating an interactive community by inviting your customers to provide favorite stories, product reviews or even share photos of your products in action.

• Invest time before launching your newsletter to set your systems up properly. Make it easy for readers to provide feedback, adjust email address or unsubscribe.

• Check, check and recheck facts, quotations, spelling and grammar in your newsletter before publishing. It only takes a few careless errors to undo all the good work you’ve put into creating your newsletter and building your brand.

• NEVER send unauthorized emails. Unauthorized emails will be considered SPAM, and aside from governmental restrictions and associated fines, it irritates the recipients and is the one of the fastest ways to lose a potential customer.

• Using a good autoresponder service or system will allow you to save time by automating the subscription (opt-in) process, verify email address through subscription confirmations, and provide you with the tools to track subscriptions and test promotions.

• Develop quality content around your product or brand that is truly interesting and relevant to your subscribers. A few topic suggestions for your newsletter might be a “how to” article, case studies, success stories, news on the company or a sneak peak at a new product about to be introduced.

• Include a subscription form or link in your newsletter. This way if it’s seen by or forwarded to people who aren’t currently on your list you’ll be making it easy for them to sign-up.

• How often you publish your newsletter depends in large part on your type of business. Generally newsletters are published weekly, bi-monthly, monthly or quarterly. For example, a business newsletter focused on the fast paced world of direct sales and MLM might be published semimonthly and used as a motivational tool, while a consumer oriented company would be fine publishing on a monthly basis. Companies that represent larger or high tech industries may want to publish on a quarterly basis and offer more in-depth industry news and trends.

• The day of the week you publish your newsletter again depends in part on your target audience. A general rule of thumb is that a business newsletter should go out during mid-week, while a consumer newsletter is best sent on the weekend.

• Include good quality, relevant photos in your newsletter. If you’re publishing online, videos add additional color and interest. Visuals aren’t meant to take the place of good content, but they do help to create a sense of connection.

A well-written newsletter can be a valuable asset to any business. Similar to other methods of promoting a business, time spent on creating and perfecting a newsletter is truly an investment in success.