Newsletter or snoozeletter?

I’ve been advising a client of mine over the last few weeks regarding their self produced newsletter. This is always tricky.

I’m usually pretty kind and will try not to call a person’s baby ugly but sometimes you just have to tell it like it is. Anyone can, and often will, delight in telling you what is wrong but if you want to have any crediblity and be taken seriously you also have to be able to suggest a practical solution. Unlike their previous consultant's proposal, our solution doesn't require re-capitalising the company, whole scale business card reprinting or reinventing the market. That is always a good place to start I find.

We pulled it to pieces as courteously and with as much diplomacy as we could but we didn’t pull our punches; we sent off our observations, held our collective breath and waited for the fallout. The MD rang us up and said that the marketing manager, his sister, (Sound of penny dropping) was going on maternity leave, could we talk? Now they could have taken their bat and ball home and in some instances in the past, and probably in the future too, they will. I’d far rather we both understood each other from the outset. Sometimes taking a thorn out a paw has been a delicate but necessary start to some of my best relationships with clients. My worst clients have been those were, primarily for pragmatic economic reasons at the time, we didn’t say what we really and completely thought during the getting to know each other phase. Those contracts, however silver lined they appeared at the time, have never made us any profit but then everyone is blessed with 20/20 hindsight.

The vast majority of our clients, just don't understand the true potential of a great email newsletter. Or conversely, the real down sides, and negative effect if you get it wrong.

In the early days of the web, there were some wonderful, informative, interesting newsletters. There still are some shining examples. Now, more and more newsletters have become little more than graphic designers strutting their stuff...with small snippets of incomplete content, accompanied by links through to an accompanying web site. They compound the problem by being self obsessed, WWD (What we do) missives, a woefully disguised sales pitch often with a misleading title that really gets your pip when you open it to find it vacuous, irrelevant or patronizing. You may as well try to disguise a whale by putting hat on it. The result? The newsletters themselves are boring, not useful, often irrelevant, not really satisfying...and destined for the junk folder and your company to oblivion. Well maybe not quite that far but certainly off the man’s radar.

Why it makes sense to deliver complete content in your newsletter?
A good newsletter builds respect and trust. Think of the newsletters to which you have subscribed for a year or more. You keep reading them for a reason. Because they are worth the time spent. And each time you read a new issue, your respect for the company or organization behind it deepens a little bit more. Meanwhile, more and more of the "drive them through to the web site" newsletters, with teaser content and onward links, lose our attention. The only way to make sure your newsletter is consistently opened is to make it WORTH opening. Complete Content newsletters are a long-term asset and should have investment and maintenance. The hard part for marketers is to resist the temptation to maximize short-term click-throughs. It may make their monthly report look good for the boss, but it doesn’t quite tell the whole story. For a variety of reasons we may find ourselves under pressure to use the newsletter to drive as many people as possible through to our sites. It's an understandable aim, but you need to find a balance that won't diminish the value of the newsletter itself, keep it fresh and running at top speed. This ‘salesman’ is potentially talking to thousands of customers. You would get pretty miffed, probably apoplectic if one of your sales team said or did some thing to ruin your relationship with your customers but thousands of company let their newsletter do this, without knowing it. As a potential customer I am really not that bothered that you have a new contract with Mr SillySod plc , or that you have a new Sales director. I want to know how you can solve MY problem, not my competitors.


What makes a good or even great newsletter?

1. Deliver complete content within the body of the newsletter, with optional links to your own site or other sites. In other words, links should be included as a choice for readers who want to explore further, not as a condition of experiencing the full content.

2. Take the long-term view.
Don't measure the success of your newsletter by short-term metrics. And don't keep changing it in search of incremental improvements in click-through rates. When you start doing that, you are on the road to transforming your newsletter into a promotional salesmail, where content is included simply as a hook, and not for its inherent value.

3. Maintain a consistent theme, tone and format.
The newsletters that keep the attention of their readers, year after year, are those that remain familiar in terms of the voice of the editor, the theme of the content and the format of the newsletter itself. Why? Because your readers are extremely sensitive to changes in their favorite newsletters. They don't like unexpected shifts in voice and content. And as many publishers have found out the hard way, subscribers hate it when text newsletters are changed to an HTML format, or when an HTML newsletter undergoes a big change in design.

And finally….. I think the essence of producing a valuable newsletter is never to lose sight of the long view. Don’t think in terms of weeks or months, but next year Make sure you deliver real value with each issue, and that means including complete content within the body of each issue.

Finally, don't let short-term metrics divert you from your long-term goal. Building long-term readership and loyalty takes time, a lot of time. The rewards however are far more lucrative and long term.

Consistency breeds familiarity. It works.

Raindancer Copyright 2006