FirstPerspective • March/April 2006

THAT HOLDS TRUE IN E-NEWSLETTER MARKETING. According to MarketingProfs.com, compared to only 1 to 3 percent of readers opening a direct mail piece and requesting more information, over 50 percent of recipients click on e-newsletter articles to get more information.

E-newsletters, when designed and written properly, provide a powerful venue for cross promoting, upselling and marketing your additional capabilities and products.

Make your e-newsletters stand out
User experience experts Nielsen Norman Group has found that e-newsletters that are informative, convenient and timely are often preferred over other media. However, their study found that only 11 percent of e-newsletters were read thoroughly, so the right layout is key. This means the newsletters must be designed to facilitate scanning. This should not be an e-mail version of your annual report, but one that places an emphasis on brevity, and a compelling and easy-to-read layout.



›	Help your readers solve day-to-day problems. Try changing your focus of selling products and services to solving your customers’ problems. Think about what they need and give options they don’t know exist.

›	Keep your readers involved. Give your readers compelling reasons to open and read your articles. Make the information relevant, timely and focused on issues and opportunities that are important to them.

›	Save them time. You can save readers’ valuable time by presenting information in an easy-to-read format. Put well-researched, quality content at their fingertips.

Stay on top of inbox competition

›	Ensure scanability and readability. Use bullets. They’re easy on the eye and give the reader digestible pieces of information. Or use teasers in the e-mail with links to the full articles online.

›	Increase usability factor. Include a table of contents or make sure you provide easy navigation. Once online, you can even offer expanded content through a micro-site with navigation to other articles.

›	Your “subject” and “from” lines are crucial. Grab readers with strong “subject” lines. Test to see what works best. Make sure to highlight your brand name in the “from” line — readers are more likely to open an e-mail or e-newsletter from a name they recognize.

›	Track by links. Find interest levels by the number of clicked links to see which articles are more popular. Fine-tune future issues based on results.

›	Solicit preferences. This allows you to personalize and target new articles, offers, promotions, etc. Also, it gives readers the opportunity to edit their preferences to ensure relevance.

›	Establish a set frequency. Whether it is monthly or quarterly, let the user know and don’t change the publishing schedule for each edition. This also makes each issue timely.

›	Let the user know what they are subscribing to. The sign-up form should articulate what the e-newsletter will entail and how often it will be sent.