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Guidelines for producing effective newsletters for staff or customers.
Make them interesting - encourage feedback and contributions.
Producing your own newsletter for
the local community is an excellent way of giving information, building an image of friendliness and trust, canvassing opinions
(and being seen to do so), and advertising your own services. Follow the basic rules of AIDA, concentrating on the first two
issues of Attention and Interest, unless you seek a direct response. Modern computer desk-top publishing programmes make it
very easy to put together a respectable news-sheet to begin with. If possible, when you are committed to the concept and wish
to increase scale, get some professional design input for the general layout, graphics and banner artwork.
Invite
contributions from your readers; a letters section is a good way to fill space and make the readers feel more involved. Especially
invite comment about the format and content of the newsletter itself, which will help to convince you how and whether to continue
publishing future issues.
Commit to a frequency and size that you can sustain.
If you can only
manage one every three months so be it. Don't promise a monthly and then fail to get the next editions out on time, which
would rather defeat the object of building your image. Start off with a single page, and allow it to increase in size if you
see positive reasons for doing so. Start by piloting just a few copies, perhaps just a few hundred, and increase the distribution
as you refine it.
Adopt a format and styling that is fit-for-purpose.
Basic rules of advertising
production apply. Keep it simple, easy to read, and avoid anything off-the-wall or extravagant. Use a format that is cost-effective
and amenable to your method of distribution (think about rack dispensing, inserts, door-to-door, etc).
Include
photographs and details of your staff.
If your newsletter allows inclusion of photographs, pictures of customers
and other people will help bring it to life. Publishing pictures of staff is also motivational.
Include positive
and happy stories. Click Here.
Keep the content up-beat, optimistic and positive. You
can't distort facts of course but you do have some licence to present issues in a way that will reflect as favourably as possible
on your business and your people.
Make one person responsible or appoint an agency.
Often the
most difficult challenge in producing a newsletter is sustaining it. It is extremely difficult to collect good ideas and news
for content, and if there is not a clear point of responsibility with schedules and deadlines the whole exercise will end
up being rushed, perhaps late or incomplete, with the result that it has a poor effect on staff and readers alike.
A
marketing or PR agency will take on the job for you at a price, but even with expensive production support, getting the raw
material is still the most difficult part of the process, and needs firm planning and monitoring.
Maintain
a consistent design.
Consistency of appearance is essential to build recognition, awareness and positive association
with your business. Don't compromise on corporate colours, quality of artwork and logos, and typestyles, even the type of
paper you use should not be changed without proper reasons.
Relate the news to your customers and their community.
Keep in mind all the time who your audience is, and assess the content to make sure it is relevant, and presented in a
way that your readers will want to read it. It may be possible for you to recover some of the cost of the newsletter by selling
some advertising space, but be careful about the type of suppliers you include so as to avoid detracting from the image you
are presenting. To Learn More Click Here.
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