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Are You Keeping in Touch...
...with your customers, partners, employees, suppliers and prospects?
 
Sheri ZiehlIn a changing and volatile business environment, with internal and external forces affecting your company, there seems to be little time for communicating the achievements, challenges, kudos, and course corrections you experience as a company. But here’s why communicating with all the audiences who can affect your success is so important and why a newsletter, printed or electronic, is so valuable. It brings peace of mind. Regular communication eases customer/employee concerns about your business. And right now – that is of HUGE importance. It’s a place to showcase your products and skills. A newsletter allows customers to know about new products or services, sends the message that you’re keeping up on industry trends, and gives you a chance to show off your in-house knowledge with articles written by product experts (which also serves as an employee morale booster). It brings attention to your business. A newsletter, printed or electronic, is a gentle reminder to your customers and prospects about you and your business and keeps you “top of mind” with your target audience. It can also soften or provide a lead-in for a follow-up sales call. It creates loyalty. Sharing information with customers and employees creates loyalty for your company and is a proven employee motivator since the more employees know and understand the company’s goals and visions, the more they’ll work toward achieving them. It’s cheap and easy. After a design format has been established, it’s just a matter of article writing, organization and execution. Yes, this does require some effort, but the feedback from these communications is consistently high. And if the newsletter is electronic, an e-newsletter, it is very inexpensive to distribute since no printing is required and delivery vehicles cost literally pennies per recipient.
A Few Newsletter "Dos" and a "Don't"
  • DO stay on schedule. If you have committed to a quarterly newsletter – send it out quarterly. Otherwise you’ll risk looking disorganized.
  • DO know what content your audience values: Consider all personality types when including articles. Have a balanced mix of articles for people who are drawn to facts and statistics, and perhaps a customer, vendor, or employee profile for those folks who are more people-oriented.
  • DO know what styles appeal to your audience: This holds true for writing styles and graphic design. Different elements will appeal to different personality types. Your mission is to keep them engaged (scroll down, click though, and continue reading). Make sure you have the right balance between number of articles and number of images to appeal to both groups.
  • DO keep it short and to the point. People are busy! Don’t assume everybody has the time or attention span to scroll through a long newsletter article. Make your point quickly and sign off.
  • DON'T disguise a promotional plug and present it as a valid newsletter article. Contrived news will send a message to the reader about you that isn’t positive.