Newsletters: What’s in it for them?

Getting consumers to read e-newsletters requires a fine balance of timing, content and relevancy. This has never been as important as it is today. Inboxes are groaning under the weight of spam, and consumers and ISPs censor unsolicited or suspicious communications more aggressively than ever.

by Helen Leggatt

To maximize the chances of your newsletters being received, read and responded to, keep the following ten tips in mind.

1. Keep the question “what’s in it for me?” in the front of your mind. That’s what your customers are going to be thinking when they receive and begin to read your newsletter.

Your customers don’t want to hear about your latest TV campaign or that you’ve employed a new post-room boy, but they do want to know about exclusive deals, competitions and new products and services that are relevant to them.

2. Be consistent. Keep subject headers, sent-from addresses, creative treatments, format and branding of your newsletter consistent, unless testing, so that recipients know what to expect and recognize your brand when it hits their inbox. This will cut down on the number of newsletters being mistaken as spam and junked.

3. Keep newsletters short and to the point. Consumers don’t want to be stuck reading pages of text and studies have shown that the more frequent the newsletter, the shorter it should be.

Use links to information on your website, or specially set up micro-sites, to encourage consumers to find out more instead of placing too much information in the newsletter.

4. Keep it personal and relevant by using dynamic content created from a variety of sources such as purchase history, coupon use or geographic references.

Further help build a relationship and keep the tone personal by sending the newsletter from a named company employee whose name is prominently featured in the “From” line and who is also the regular sign-off.

5. Stick to a regular schedule. If you’ve told a consumer that you’ll be sending a newsletter every month, make sure it arrives at the same time every month. Regularity is comforting to consumers and erratically dispatched newsletters can be damaging and counter-productive.

6. Keep ideas flowing. To avoid delays or last-minute panics, plan and create content ahead of time. Develop an editorial calendar and distribute it to all company departments to encourage ideas and content ahead of time.

7. Monitor deliverability. To optimize delivery avoid the use of certain words such as “free” and encourage recipients to add your email address to their address book or safe-senders list.

8. Write subject headers that grab attention. “Newsletter – February ‘08” isn’t particularly exciting. Allude to content that addresses their question “what’s in it for me?” and that stands out from the masses they receive each day while including an element of branding so they recognize the sender.

9. Maximize circulation. Get more mileage out of your newsletter by encouraging recipients to forward it on to others. Offer an incentive, such as a discount code, that their friends can immediately benefit from.

10. Keep mailing data up-to-date. Include a means by which recipients can unsubscribe or change their contact information. Keep unsubscribe processes as simple as possible and don’t collect more information than you actually need.