Marketing Newsletter Do’s and Don’t's

Your newsletter is an effective, low-cost marketing tool that delivers information about your company, product, personality, and values to engage people, spark interest, and build customer relationships.  We have had the opportunity to help countless small businesses with their email marketing campaigns.  One thing we have noticed is that most of the small businesses that produce a quality monthly email newsletter have more new business in their pipeline than those that don't.   While great email marketing takes time and resources to develop it also doesn't take a rocket scientist to start one, and to start learning how to do it better each month to increase your desired outcomes.  Here are a few Do's and Don't for email newsletters that we have learned over the years.  

Keep these guidelines in mind for your newsletter:

• Do lay out your newsletter with plenty of headers, subheads, boxes, figures, or illustrations.
• Don’t invest in expensive four-color printing; desktop publishing, Web distribution, or photocopying are best unless you have a large, paid circulation.
• Do build and nurture your own in-house list of customers, leads, and referrals.
• Do understand the difference between an e-newsletter that annoys the recipient and a valuable e-newsletter people look forward to receiving.
• Do send your newsletter to a media list to generate publicity.
• Don’t charge money for your newsletter unless you want to make it a serious product on its own rather than a publicity piece for your business.
• Do provide useful information, tips, and news about your industry in every issue.
• Don’t go into your own products in too much detail; otherwise, readers won’t value the newsletter as an objective source of information.

About the author:  Sam Casey is the Managing Partner at Banyan Creative.   He enjoys helping small businesses understand who they are and help strategize on the right marketing efforts to drive top notch engagement with customers and prospects.   Connect with Sam on LinkedIn