Digital Minds Forum

In my last blog post I asked some questions that hopefully got you thinking about content for your newsletter. Now you’ve done the hard work, here are some easy ideas to give you a bit more inspiration:

1. Guest/celebrity articles
2. Ask the expert (this is always the most popular of the articles I write)
3. How to articles
4. Interviews – an expert, a staff member, a customer
5. Stories about how your products have impacted someone’s life
6. Veteran input
7. Inspirational client stories
8. Lists of Top 10 websites/blogs/resources relevant to your market
9. Top 10s, 5 tips, 10 idea etc
10. Do’s and Don’ts
11. Statistics
12. FAQs
13. Competitions
14. Surveys/survey results
15. Reader feedback
16. Spotlight
17. Day in the life
18. Comment on news stories relevant to your industry
19. Review other people’s products
20. Write articles about your keywords
21. Get ideas from competitor news or newsletters from other industries
22. Browse article directories
23. YouTube clips relevant to your industry
24. Podcasts or vodcasts you have created
25. Look at industry blogs and steal (sorry – source), ideas from

Now think of 10 more!

Marie Page runs an international e-business selling instructional DVDs teaching contemporary musical instruments. She blogs at http://musicademy.com/blog

Most marketers will at some stage or other have been involved in producing a customer newsletter. Back in the day these were long drawn out affairs involving copywriters, editorial teams, a designer, typesetter, external printer and fulfilment house. Nowadays they are far more likely to be digital e-newsletters and all the basics of success are a mailing list, an internet connection and something to write about.

I’ll tackle content ideas another time but for now, here’s a case study on how I’ve developed a successful model of writing and publishing e-newsletters.

I’ve entitled this post “Blogging and e—newsletters” because I use the two in an integrated manner. For the purpose of this article my business is irrelevant really, but if the context helps you, I sell training DVDs online to church based musicians. I blog most days and every week or so collect the posts together to create a newsletter which is then e-mailed. My more tech-savvy customers get the blogs as they happen on RSS feed but most still prefer a less frequent newsletter by email. And how do I know this? Well having been blogging and emailing for a fair time I then asked my customers what they thought of the frequency and content using a wonderful free online survey tool called www.surveymonkey.com. In case you are interested my survey is here. The results were great and showed an extraordinarily high satisfaction rate (you can see the summary responses here).

Firstly, WHO to send it to?

A permission based list is a no brainer. Don’t buy-in lists, instead focus energy and resources on creating your own. This will be previous and existing customers, prospects, industry contacts, journalists etc etc. Create a simple sign-up form on your website (offer an incentive if you like), capture email details at trade shows, publish your newsletter via your Facebook fan page, your Tweetfeed, offer it to relevant people in your Linked In network. In three years we’ve grown our business database to about 20,000 and we run a very small niche business so that’s quite substantial.

Don’t forget to send a copy to your own staff – its good internal marketing. And if you’re publishing via a blog, encourage them to contribute their own comments. (Read more…)