Blog - Brock Henderson Marketing Guru

Communicating with customers in any business is essential, so how
do you keep in touch with customers without irritating them? Newsletters.
I am a big fan of a newsletter because you can do so much with it. You can inform, sell, educate, and survey all at the same time.  Of primary importance is that the newsletter be useful to the customer. If the customer doesn’t find it useful, then you are wasting your efforts. Include information
such as tips on how to make better use of common programs; or interesting web sites; or helpful web sites; or whatever would be of use to your “typical” customer. If your customer base has a large percentage of business customers you might have a special section dedicated to useful business information; or even two newsletters, one for business customers and one for consumers.

Don’t want to write your own newsletter? There are firms out there that will
write the newsletter for you, (such as myself).  Your newsletter can be mailed through the Post Office, e-mailed, or simply on line as part of your web site.

A printed newsletter is the most expensive of the three options because you have printing costs as well as postage costs.  Many individuals like an online version, but my experience is that people won’t go to it without your prodding them, which means a mass e-mail to tell your customers
that the new edition of the newsletter is up, so you might as well just e-mail the newsletter in the first place and be done with it.

My pick is an e-mailed newsletter, but make your newsletter an Opt-in; meaning that people must sign up for the newsletter. However, if you have a large existing customer base and have all their e-mail addresses you
can simply start sending it to them on a regular basis.  But please have a way forthem to Opt-out if they don’t want to receive your newsletter. You will find that very few will opt-out, most will accept it gratefully.

NOTE:  Federal Law requires you to have opt-out information, (usually a link), on all e-mailed marketing materials.

Let me explain my thinking in order to give you a better idea about the
thought process involved in creating a newsletter.

First it is in PDF format.  Many people are fearful of opening attachments because that is the way viruses are spread, but you will find that these same people are completely comfortable in opening a PDF file.
Why not do it in Word and send it that way? Because people are reluctant to open many forms of attachments … even Word documents are sometimes suspect. But I suggest the PDF format because many of my initial readers
are techies, and they typically despise HTML or anything Microsoft. So I createed the newsletter in Microsoft’s Publisher and then convert it
to a PDF file. It’s an easy extra step for me and it makes my readers more
comfortable.