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Your Newsletter: The Basics

by Brandon Milford

When designing your newsletter always keep in mind the amount of time you can expect your reader to spend viewing your newsletter. Everyone today is information hungry, but always in a hurry. How you display your content within your newsletter can capitalize on this assumption.

What Information Should I Include in My Newsletter?

Obviously this will depend on your business and the audience in which you are marketing, but here are three email newsletter basics recommendations:

* Announcements: Include recent information about your company and/or    products that impacts your readers. For instance, you can include a link to an    upcoming tradeshow where your company will be exhibiting or perhaps a seminar    that your company will be sponsoring.

* Article: Include an article that relates to your products or services and helps
   your readers. It is also a great idea to develop a resource library that contains    additional articles and provide a link for your readers so they can find more    information on similar topics.

* Case Study: Provide an example of a client who has achieved great results
   while using your products or services. This will help build credibility with    your readers. Again, provide a link where your readers can view additional case    studies.

Those are three key items to include in your newsletter. If you include these you are keeping your readers up to date on recent information about your products or services, including an article providing value on topics affecting them and by providing a case study you are proving to your readers that others are achieving success by using your products or services.

Making Your Articles Easier to Digest

Think of how we read newspapers; the same holds true for how we read material on the web. We skim headlines looking for something that interests us and only then will we begin reading an article. We also stop to view photographs and any visual cues offering greater insight as to the information held within an article. I see far too many articles within newsletters that are very long (greater than 900 words). When writing your article try to keep it at 800 words or less and break each section into smaller, easy to read blocks with bolded headlines over each section. This will encourage your reader to skim your article and stop at each section they find interesting. If you are finding it impossible to trim your article simply find a good point within 800 or fewer words and provide a link to a webpage that contains the article in its entirety.

Sharing Your Newsletter with Others

Always give your readers a reason and a means by which to share your newsletter with others. By providing valuable and relevant content to your subscribers they will be inclined to share this information with others by forwarding your newsletter. Email marketing software, like iContact, provide a "Forward-to-a-Friend" feature that inserts a link within the footer of your message allowing your readers to easily forward your newsletter. The goal is to obviously reach out to as many as possible by providing valuable, relevant, timely content, and an easy way for your readers to share this information with others.

Brandon Milford is Vice President of Marketing for Broadwick, Corp. Broadwick offers the leading permission based email marketing software, iContact. We Simplify Email Marketing. (c) Broadwick, Corp. 2000-2006 http://www.broadwick.com All Rights Reserved. You may freely distribute or publish this article provided you publish the whole article and include this copyright notice and links in full.

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