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Major Communications
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Major Communications
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Too many email newsletter publishers waste thousands of opportunities to sell more when they build up a valuable list of self-selected prospects, but then insult them with a newsletter that is actually not 'news,' but thinly-veiled self promotion. It's the number-one way to send subscribers scrambling for the delete key.
"Sell the sizzle, not the steak," as my old marketing professor used to teach. What current event or industry scoop can be subtly related back to your product? Let your products or services play a supporting role by using them to illustrate a point. My client Reach4Life sells nutritional supplements. When I write an article for their newsletter that examines athletic use of supplements to improve performance, or natural ways to fight the season's flu epidemic, the journalistic goal is to interest and inform the reader, not to hype supplements.
Fill your writing with vivid examples that readers can grab onto and understand. Think in terms of what the reader is going to get out of your publication rather than what you're going to get out them. The old writing adage "show, don't tell" holds true when writing for your newsletter. Analogies, anecdotes and examples will make your writing come alive.
In case studies that involve your product, let a successful client take center stage, not your product. For example, my client David Sterne of The Inside Track, is a trade show industry insider that publishes a monthly newsletter plus three special issues per trade show. In the past six months of publishing, David has reduced the number of cold calls he makes each week from over a hundred to ZERO! Now they're all 'warm calls' to subscribers familiar with his company. The time savings and profit has been phenomenal for him, since he works one time to educate any where from 115 to over 1,000 recipients through each issue of the newsletter. The content is focused on educating exhibitors, which in turn, provides evidence of his expertise.
Here's a tip...
You're interested in a tip? So are your readers. Use tips generously throughout your writing.
Implement a question and answer format in your newsletter. Another client, Gerri Detweiler, is a debt expert who writes "The Ultimate Credit Online Newsletter" to help people get out of debt and into financial independence. Her "Ask Gerri" column creates a dialogue between her and her subscribers, provides ideas for editorial direction and allows her to gage the interests of her readers. Another client, Women's U, turns incoming questions over to her faculty members (in your case, perhaps your vendors or employees would work) and presents a list of three or four different answers. This technique not only adds value to the newsletter by offering a range of opinions, it also shows that she has a network of expert resources to draw upon.
Bear in mind that you should strive to eradicate from your composition each and every nonessential or superfluous word as well as any and all pompous and pretentious language in order to clarify and simplify your verbiage. Remember this isn't high school English class where you have to get out a 500-word essay on your very, very, very, very exciting summer vacation.
As long as you're the expert in your industry and tapped into the subjects that are on the top of your customers' minds, you should be able to pick out the hot topic of the day. Controversial issues, helpful lessons, success stories and ask-the-expert features are of interest to your readers. Give your product or service a supporting role in a to-the-point informative article, and you've got copy that is hot. So hot it sizzles.
And that sizzle sells.
The Idea Station is an editorial and writing services company that specializes in producing email newsletters and Web site content. Shannon Kinnard writes the column "Incubator" for digitalsouth magazine and the column "Browsing" for Entrepreneur's Business Start Ups.
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