Melon Corporate Blog
What’s in it for me?… Creating a Newsletter that Informs as well as Sells
This issue I would like to talk about email newsletters, the strategy behind them and why they should be both beneficial to the sender as well as the receiver.
Whether you are a business who sells products or services, we can all benefit from communicating regularly to our customers. But this doesn’t always have to be with direct selling and I would actually advise against sending too much EDM (Electronic Direct Mail) as you can upset your database and ultimately cause them to unsubscribe.
An excellent way to keep your brand in your customer's consciousness without annoying the hell out of them, is by providing them with a regular communication that satisfies the common attitude of 'What's in it for me?'
A perfect example of this is providing a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter. Within this newsletter you should have a maximum of 2-3 articles with short summaries and then a click through link to a webpage with the full article. The articles should be relevant to your industry and be of interest to your recipients.
IMPORTANT: This is not an opportunity to bombard your database with articles about why your product or service is superior. Ideally it should present a relevant issue of interest to the reader and be within the realm of your industry. The selling part we will get to.
The newsletter should have the company logo clearly visible in a banner at the top of the newsletter. The banner should be eye catching but not too large. The reason for this is because the top section of your newsletter will sometimes be the only thing that the reader sees in their inbox preview window as they are sifting through their email.
You want the user to be able to identify who the email is from and what it relates to almost immediately. Typically you have approximately 3-4 seconds to convince them.
The articles that you include in each newsletter should not be too long and be quite an easy read. Include pictures and space the text out so it is easily readable.
You want to ensure the user to read your articles because the action items you are going to put at the bottom of your newsletter should be relative to your articles.
For instance, if you were a pet shop owner, a relevant article could be the importance of regular exercise for your pet and a healthy diet.
The action item would be a link to part of your website that lists quality food products and toys for the user to purchase.
So what you have done here is made the reader aware of an issue as well as provided the solution for it.
Using this idea of 'What's in it for me?' will help in achieving higher subscribe rates, more sending to friends and less unsubscribes.
Nothing beats quality content. Your database will thank you for it.
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Comments - oldest entries appear first, most recent entries at the end.
I totally agree, ‘What’s in it for me?’ is something all good marketing people should be taking into account.
By Sheryl Mathews on 24 01 2008
Yeah, usually people just focus on what can I get or how does this benefit me..but you should try to get others around you successful; good tips.
By Gamer on 13 03 2008
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