How to Get More People to Do Business With You

If you’re like me, you get at least a few newsletters a week. You might even get some every day, like I do from NewEgg, a digital merchant that I have come to rely on for good deals and fast service. (No, I don’t have stock in the company. I’m just a happy customer, so I’m willing to let them spam me every day during the holiday season.)

You’re selective about the newsletters you get, because if you opted into everyone that came along, you’d spend more time opening e-mail newsletters than actually reading them. So, what does it take for an e-newsletter to make your “must read” list? Hold that thought for a few minutes if you’ve been mulling over creating your own e-newsletter.

I’m a huge fan of e-newsletters because they are:

1. Inexpensive to produce and distribute via email
2. Promote your business and generate leads
3. Establish you as an expert in your field with your sales prospects and customers
4. Build relationships with your audience

E-newsletters provide a lot traction without the high cost or hard work of direct mail and other print media. You get nearly instant response to your news, special offers, ads—whatever business you’re all about.

The challenge with producing e-newsletters is in creating an online product your readers will look forward to receiving, find informative and relevant to their work or home lives. It also helps if it’s entertaining or cleverly written. I admit that’s much harder too do than it sounds.

Your content could be about new projects you’ve under taken or completed, special offers or sales, important events like an upcoming Webinar or tradeshow, industry news, or life and hobby tips. It depends on the business you’re in and what your objectives are. I can tell you is that if all you have to offer is marketing fluff, you’re not going to get very far (you’ll annoy more than a few people too).

It’s enough for your e-newsletter to be ordinary

What amount of content should go into your newsletter? Two, three or maybe, four, articles will suffice. You want to keep it to one or two pages unless your content is so extraordinary you need more pages and I haven’t seen an e-newsletter like that yet. Instead, provide links to relevant content on your Web site in case readers want more details and to boost your traffic.

I’d suggest running a main article that is neutral–not overtly sales oriented–in tone. It might be a customer story, the results of a market research study your company has done or something similarly informative. Use the rest of the space for product announcements, company news, discounts and so on—don’t over do the hype.

I will write about the value of customer success stories and why there are valuable soon. It’s a great way to use the same information in two or three ways.

No one reads word-for-word on the Web. They skim. It’s no different for e-newsletters—heck, it might be even more true for e-newsletters than Web pages.

You have to make it easy for readers to quickly get in and out of your newsletter. That means short bursts of information rather than lengthy articles; descriptive and compelling headlines and subheads; bulleted or numbered lists; unambiguous links and all the other tricks of Web writing.

That’s one reason I like using a small table of contents, even on a one-page newsletter. It gives the reader a quick look-see at the content. Do it right and they’ll continue to stick around and actually read something.

I also happen to like writing a “deck” or subhead for the primary content in the newsletter. Descriptive heads and decks—ones whose meanings are evident–complement each other. If subscribers read nothing else, they’ll get the big idea right away.

Here’s an example:

[headline] How to Build Better Customer Relationships with Your Customers
[subhead] Our advanced social-networking platform streamlines ordering , speeds delivery and saves you money and that makes your customers happy

It’s always about the e-newsletter’s content

Your content determines your e-newsletter’s format. I advocate for e-newsletters with two or three columns. Lengthy copy in wide columns is hard on the eyes. Again, your objective is to play into the way people read on the Web. Pack your page real estate with many bite-sized chunks of content instead one epic narrative.

Use simple graphics. Unlike print, online readers tend to focus more on text than graphics. Use colored boxes to highlight key items to make your layout visually interesting and guide readers to key topics. Your e-news email will download and pop open faster too.

One of the cardinal rules of publishing an e-newsletter is to send it out on a regular schedule. You want your readers to become accustomed to receiving your newsletter and, ideally, anticipate when it will arrive. What should that schedule be? I hate to equivocate, but the truth is, it could be anywhere from everyday (rare) to once a year (even rarer). It depends on your audience, content and your objectives.

The worse thing is to send your e-news out too often if your content doesn’t merit it. Everyone gets newsletters these days, and not many of them get read as it is. I’ll bet you automatically delete some of the newsletters you subscribe to because you get sick of seeing them turn up in your in box or don’t have time to read them. So do I.

If I were you, I’d start by sending out your e-newsletter once a month and see how it goes.

Tracking the success of your newsletter is relatively easy–you’ll know soon enough if it’s effective by the number of people who opt-in and then unsubscribe. There are other ways to measure the success of your e-newsletter—everything from the number of inquiries you receive in response to special offers, to the number of recipients who actually open your email.

I worked for one magazine and Website publishing company where we sent out the same news-oriented, e-newsletter twice a week. At another place I worked, we sent out seven different newsletters every week and a four more every other week. Based on reader feedback, advertising revenues, the leads the newsletters were generating for our advertisers, open rates and other factors, those schedules worked for us.

If you’re promoting your own business, the only ads you’ll have are most likely your own, so don’t over do it. If you’re really energetic, look for ways to co-partner with a company that you do business with. Perhaps they’ll foot some of the cost with an ad or provide you with their customer mailing list. Be creative.

Make it easy for subscribers to opt into your e-newsletter. Make it easy to unsubscribe too. If you don’t, subscribers will tag your newsletter as spam. You’ve probably done it. Same here.

If you don’t have the in-house talent to produce an e-newsletter or lack the resources to manage your  subscriber list, you can outsource part or all of the job. Do a search. You can download free templates, find companies who will handle your subscriber list and more. I grabbed the newsletter template above free from Templates Box.

I’ll write about outsourcing your e-newsletter and the variety of options you have to build and manage your list some other time.