The Fundamentals of a Good Newsletter
We all know that communication is an extremely significant aspect that carries a great value in the business world. Communication helps business people express their ideas and thoughts, as well as providing each other with essential information. However, there are three different forms of communication used in the business organization: verbal, non-verbal, and written. But among the three different methods, the written communication requires more thought and effort to ensure that the text conveys its message concisely.
The great importance of written communication is apparent by the number of materials and handbooks that are published by the companies as their means of communication to their employees or other outside business parties. One of the most common forms of written communication used by the companies is a corporate newsletter. In this article, we will discuss all the important information that is associated with a newsletter and how they are essential for the business.
What Is a Newsletter?
According to a Wikipedia article, “a newsletter is a printed report containing news (information) of the activities of a business (legal name; subscription business model) or an organization (institution, societies, associations) that is sent by mail regularly to all its members, customers, employees or people, who are interested in. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of interest to its recipients”.
A newsletter, which is a shortened form of newspaper and informational letter, may be your best option if you are looking for the quickest method to disseminate the latest information to the members of your organization. Hence, it is safe to say that a newsletter is formatted to be a practical and budget-friendly medium that you can use to build and maintain a good relationship with customers and clients through regular written communication.
It has been proven in the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends study that 78% respondents use newsletters to keep them posted on the happenings and updates of an organization or company. On the other hand, the research that has been conducted by the Nielsen Normal Group showed that 90 percent of the respondents prefer to receive company updates compared to the 10 percent who want to get updates from the social media.
4 Major Uses of a Newsletter
It is important to understand that the purpose of writing a newsletter is not a one-size-fits-all. When you want to use a newsletter to connect with your audience, you must know its different uses and make sure that its content should include up-to-date, specialized and valuable information to ensure that your readers will find it useful.
In this section, we have listed down five major uses of a newsletter:
It helps you introduce a new product.
If you want to effectively and successfully promote a new product, introducing your new business offering through newsletters is a great way to excite your target customers even before you start planning the launch of a product. Doing it right will require you to invest in some effort if you want to get the word out about the new product will be offered by your company soon. It is also important to keep in mind that the use of a newsletter is more than just making an announcement about your product launch; your message should engage and spark excitement in your prospective customers.
Make sure that include the following elements:
- Testimonials from customers
- Unbiased reviews
- Call to action
It puts the spotlight on your company brand.
Although one of the main uses of a newsletter is to share relevant and up-to-date information to readers, promote sales and new products, a newsletter is a great tool to highlight your company and the things that set you apart from your other competitors.
When you make it a habit of sharing relevant updates about your company, your readers are more likely to become more connected with you that they want to help you share your story with other people. When this happens, you effortlessly shine a spotlight on your brand and business, thus boosting brand recognition. Using the newsletter properly to your advantage can make the new and old customers feel more connected to your brand and company.
It keeps customers in the loop on the latest company news.
Sending an informative newsletter to your customers is a great way to keep them in the know about the current happenings in your company. Aside from promoting your business to your target customers, your newsletter should also provide pertinent information on the current status of your sector. By doing so, you effectively build authority in your industry that is why you have to make sure the kind of information that you will write on your newsletter can engage your readers.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing
If you want to increase the number of subscribers to your newsletter, one effective way to achieve it by informing your members that your company or organization will be offering some special deals. You can advise your members to share the information with their friends and family. You will not only increase brand awareness, but it will also boost the sales and profits of your organization. This is a great strategy that can help you increase your contact base without exerting too much effort or paying for expensive marketing campaigns.
How Newsletters Benefit Your Business
Companies who are known to incorporate the use of newsletters as part of their marketing strategy are more likely to easily increase their customer base, as well as customer loyalty and repeat business, compared to companies who do not. Despite the age of social media, there are still a lot of business experts who believed in the power of newsletters to build good and lasting relationships with customers and clients. In this section, we will discuss the benefits that come with using newsletters:
Builds a Relation of Trust
A relationship that is built on trust is proven strong and lasting. So when you write a newsletter for your customers and/clients, make sure that the information that you want to share with them is 100 percent factual and reliable. With every new edition of your newsletter, you must ensure that you continually build trust. So when the time comes when a competitor is tempting your newsletter readers to try out their business offerings, they will not easily give in because of the trust that you have built with them.
Brand Awareness
Your newsletter is a powerful and effective tool that you can use as part of your brand strategy to boost brand awareness, as well as make your target customers and client gain a better understanding of your company and what you can offer to them. If you want to effectively increase brand awareness, make sure not to limit your newsletter on the products and/or services that your company is offering.
Keep in mind that when a newsletter is used properly, its content can help build a clearer and broader overview of not only your business offerings but also your company as a whole. To help your readers know more about your brand, providing links that would redirect them to your website.
Strengthens Marketing Efforts
When the content of your newsletter is well-written and highly informative, you can use it as a way to stabilize the marketing plans and sales strategy that are essential for the success of your business. Moreover, it can attract more subscribers and readers will anticipate for the next issue of your newsletter. When readers are looking forward to receiving their copies, you are guaranteed that no cent is ever wasted printing your newsletters.
Makes Customers More Confident with Your Company
A newsletter can be used as a perfect tool to demonstrate your expertise in the business. As a result, customers will be more confident on you as their potential supplier. You can use the newsletter to help the company build authority and leadership in the industry. To achieve leadership, your newsletter should include articles that tackle the current issues in the market and share the latest information on the industry research. In this way, you are able to knowledge and reliability in your readers’ mind. This will easily help you gain the trust of your readers, too.
Boosts Traffic to Your Website
Aside from printable newsletters, you can also send e-newsletters to your email subscribers if you do not have the time to print them. Email newsletters are now considered to be the fastest and most convenient way to get in touch with your readers. Thanks to the rise of modern digital technology. And since all businesses have websites nowadays, using special promotions and coupon vouchers will make readers want to visit your website to claim them. That is why it is always important to include the address of your website on every copy of your newsletter issue, regardless of any promotion, to help increase traffic to your website.
Provide Business Exposure
Since most newsletters can be used in your advertising plan, they can effectively boost the exposure of your business or brand in your target market, without any risk of aggressive marketing. A well-crafted and interesting information about the current happenings in the industry makes your readers anticipate to the next issue of your newsletters.
Helps Increase Sales
Among other things, it is extremely important to make sure that every issue of your newsletter should be carefully crafted with insightful and entertaining information that will engage the readers. However, you should not forget the main purpose of writing is to generate and increase sales. By doing so, you will not only share vital information to your readers but you also ensure that you will increase your target sales, which will ultimately result in profit and revenue.
Checklist for Effective Newsletters
Businesses, no matter what type of industry they belong, use the newsletter as part of their marketing strategy to connect with their target customers, as well as boost the exposure of their brands. However, they have unique design and distribution of their newsletters based on what their readers want and need. No matter what the design of your newsletter is, make sure to follow this checklist to ensure they contain the necessary elements:
Clever Headlines
Whether you are sending a physical copy or an email newsletter, it is crucial to make sure that your headlines should effectively spark the interest of the reader to make them want to open and read the contents of your newsletter.
Regular Schedule
Newsletters are often published and distributed to the target readers either weekly or monthly. Make sure to maintain and observe regular and timely distribution.
Effective Call to Action
Whether you are sharing updates about their latest happening about your company or promoting new products and/or services, your newsletter should have a strong and effective call to action.
Clean Format
Messy placement of information can lead to confusion. Make sure to carefully and strategically place the various section in an organized manner so that readers know where to find them if they are looking for a certain information.
Mobile Responsive
If you prefer sending newsletters through email, make sure that they are mobile responsive so that your readers can easily open and read the reader on mobile devices. That is why it is important to optimize your newsletters for smartphones and tablets for the convenience of the readers.
Unsubscribe Button
Although most companies want to increase the number of their subscribers, it is still crucial to put an unsubscribe button in your email newsletter, even if it means that you will be losing a subscriber.
Incentives
Offering special promos and deals is not only an effective marketing but the readers are more likely to make a purchase.
Terms and Conditions
When a target customer wants to sign up for your newsletter, it is important to know what their personal information will be used for. To give them a better understand, it is advisable to include a link to the terms and conditions and privacy policy to ensure them that their personal information is protected and not shared.
Tips for Writing a Good Newsletter
Let us face it; you are not the only one who is sending newsletters to your target audience. Your competitors in the business are also sending newsletters to the same target audience as yours. That is why it is important that your newsletter will stand out from the ones that are sent by your competitors. When writing a newsletter, you should make sure that your newsletter content should feel personal so that when they arrive in their mailboxes or inbox, you can effectively build a relationship with them. Building a strong emotional relationship with your target audience create a bond between you and your readers than any website can.
Write from the reader’s perspective
When writing the content of your newsletter, it is important to consider that factors that make reading enjoyable and informative. It is important to know that readers are looking forward to learning something new and relevant to them. Including latest updates and tips in your newsletter is an effective way to give readers reasons to read your newsletter.
Incorporate a Journalism Style of Writing
Your writing is one of the determining factors that can entice an audience to read your newsletter. A well-written article should incorporate the 5 Ws and H (who, what, where, when, why, and how). By using this technique, it can help you create an interesting opening statement. The subsequent paragraphs should be able to provide answers, making it more informative to the readers.
Research
Taking time to gather vital facts and resource to include in your newsletter can make your content more effective.
Include Facts, Statistics, and Quotes
Using quotes either from interviews or supplemental articles can help make the content more credible and trustworthy. This shows the readers that you have taken the time to interview relevant and reliable people or researched credible sources to provide newsletter article that is full of facts. You can also choose to include graphs to give them of an overview of statistics.
Straightforward Writing
Using a simple wordings and active verbs can make your content more readable. It is also important to avoid using jargons and injecting any personal opinions. If you want to make it more credible, use quotes from reliable and professional business people.
Brief and Concise Information
No one wants a newsletter article that is indirect and too long to read. It is advisable to use bullets and keep your sentences short and concise as much as possible. Although you will not be able to elaborate the details, you can surely provide your target readers with a clear overview. If the information that you will write on your newsletter is quite complex, you can provide more resources or suggest readers to contact you for more information.
Use Relevant Images
Incorporating images or prices that are relevant to the content make your newsletter article look more professional and credible. You should avoid putting images just for the sake of making your article look good. Do not forget to include the name of the photographer and provide a caption for the each image to make it understandable to the readers.
Interesting Headlines
The main purpose of using a headline is to capture the attention of the readers. However, it is not recommendable to use flowery words for your headlines; instead use active verb/noun, new developments, and offer benefit to make them sound interesting.
Mind the Copyright Issues
To avoid copyrights issues, make sure to always cite or provide sources and references when using quotations and facts.
Proofread the Article before Finalizing
Spelling and grammatical errors, as well as typos, make the content of your newsletter look unprofessional and unreliable. Take a few minutes to carefully and thoroughly examine it for any errors and have someone to proof read the draft of your article before sending them to your readers.
Sample Newsletter Templates that You Can Download and Use as References
If you are wondering how to write an effective and powerful newsletter, it is relatively simple as long as you consider all the factors and implement the tips that are provided in this article. However, if this is your first time to write and is not quite confident with your writing style, we offer sample templates that you can use as your reference when drafting your newsletter content. The sample templates that are provided below are available for free download and are highly editable using the necessary editing tools. Browse through the selections that are provided below, choose the one that best suits your purpose and click on the download button.
Investment Company Newsletter Template
Real Estate Email Newsletter Template
Monthly Real Estate Email Newsletter Template
Company Newsletter Template
Energy Company Newsletter Template
Small Business Newsletter Template
Free College Email Newsletter Template
Free Newsletter Article Download
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Newsletter and Web Site Article
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Hamilton County Historical Society Newsletter
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Board of Accountancy Newsletter Template
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Company Email Newsletter Template Sample
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Free Catchy Business Newsletter Template Download
dhbins.com
Sample How to Create an E-Business Newsletter
washington.edu
Monthly Newsletter Template Sample
morgan-hill.ca.gov
President Monthly Newsletter Template Example Download
tlqmc.net
Preschool Newsletter Template
obparks.org
Monthly School Newsletter Template
smsberea.org
International Non proprietary Newsletter Template
who.int
Sample Free Newspaper Template Word Format
eaton.k12.oh.us
Business Newsletter Templates Sample
blueprintforbusiness.org
Real Estate Email Newsletter Template
bre.ca.gov
Real Estate Newsletter Marketing Free Download
realestate.wharton.upenn.edu
Family Newsletter Template Christmas Free Download
stpaulslb.org
Monthly Company Newsletter Template
mendosbdc.org
Small Business Newsletter
powerofbusiness.net
Business Values Newsletter
mercia.net.au
Business Analyst Newsletter
iiba.org
Healthy Family Nutrition Newsletter Example Download
extension.oregonstate.edu
Child Care Family Newsletter Template Free Download
extcc.org
Final Thoughts
Although content marketing is becoming more popular in the past few years, there are still business experts who continually believe in the power of writing a good newsletter. Hence, among the marketing tools, we can say that the newsletters that the most cost-effective and efficient method of communication to promote your brand, company, as well as your products and/or service all at once, leaving your company with more budget to spend on other important things such as advertising and other promotional efforts.
Now that we have reached the end part of this article, making sure to always keep in mind all the information that is discussed above. Do not hesitate to check out and download our free newsletters templates and use them as your guide.
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