Every company wants to send formal communication to its clients- to profile new services on offer, and to maintain some level of relationship going forward. While one of the objectives of the newsletter is to promote sales, its ability to direct users to your website, where other services and products are on offer, should not be underestimated.
Here are some key considerations when creating a newsletter:
Do your homework and preparationYour corporate database is one of your most valuable assets, and is only as valuable as your products and services are relevant to its contacts. Your database has got to be fine-tuned according to the contacts’ relationships with your company and has got to be updated regularly in order to be of the greatest use.
Learn to Speak the LingoFind out what your target audience is, what they like, and how and when they like it.
Size Does CountKeep the newsletter file size small. Large files take time to download and are unnecessary.
Choose A Format; Select A Back-UpHow are you going to send your newsletter out? Before you decide this, you should know:
Jpegs: may look better to the eye, but do not necessarily download, depending on the spam settings of the recipient. If they don’t, the recipient will just see a blank space.
PDFs: can only be sent out as attachments, giving your recipient an extra step to view the content. How sure are you of your relationship with your client- would they take the time?
Html: distributes a small file size but can be erratic in display, depending on the browser and settings of the recipient.
What you should be looking to do is cover as many bases as possible, and offer the option of something displaying in the body of the email, and either an attached file or a link to a web-page, should something go wrong with the emailed version.
Love at First SightDon’t send out ugly-looking stuff, simple. People are attracted to what looks good to the eye. If you aren’t completely sure about your own discretion, go for clean, simple and minimal, and ask yourself what you’d think of it in five years’ time- will it have dated?
Strike A BalanceBetween images and content. While much of your appeal lies in the manipulative qualities of good online copywriting, pictures truly do say a thousand words. Invest in decent, quality images that really do represent your business and who it appeals to, and use them to create visual associations with your company image.
All Roads Lead To…While your newsletter may be an important communication tool and branding device, it should be considered a channel to get web traffic to your site, so remember to link to your website as accurately as possible.
