Customer Newsletter Ideas
A company newsletter can be a great way for any business to gain recognition in its market area and increase sales. Consumers also report higher satisfaction with companies that keep them in the loop on important and interesting matters. Customer newsletters should be aimed toward the customer, and presented in a factual, intriguing, and professional way. It's also important that they're visually appealing to immediately catch readers' attention.
Other People Are Reading
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Article Ideas
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Publishing information that's important to current and prospective customers is the best way to encourage readership. Tell customers how current events affect your business from their point of view. Highlight your company's community involvement, such as volunteerism and donations, to spread the word about charitable contributions. Create employee or customer profiles and involve readers by publishing their ideas for innovative uses for your product. Positive customer reviews, coupons and discounts are other excellent content.
Print Newsletters
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The major cost of paper-and-ink newsletters is often printing them. The more you know about printing, the more you can save when sending off your newsletter to be published. Get quotes from multiple printing shops and look for competitive rates. Be sure to compare quality and price. Using oddly sized or shaped paper can drive costs up, so use standard sheet sizes and make your content jump out at readers instead. Choose a quality paper based on whiteness, weight and coating...and use recycled paper, something readers will appreciate.
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Electronic Newsletters
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Electronic newsletters avoid printing and mailing costs, but you have to work hard to entice your audience, and remember that some people don't have Internet access or they can view e-mails but can't surf the web. Plain-text e-mails have the widest possible audience, but they're not very eye-catching because they lack the color and graphics that HTML or PDF e-mails contain. You may choose to publish a Web newsletter directly on your website rather than distributing it, but then you need to drive traffic to the site.
Common Mistakes
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Avoid common mistakes to give your newsletter the best chance at success. Don't create a three-page ad as your "newsletter." Publish the newsletter regularly, and make sure customers know how often that will be. Use catchy headlines that describe the articles. Don't use generic headlines like "Message from the President." Headlines should be varied sizes and lead sentences should be strong and interesting. Don't use too many font styles or a rigid format. Consistent side-by-side columns throughout the newsletter are visually boring. Finally, use photos to add visual interest.
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References
Resources
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