How To Structure An Effective E-Newsletter

Forget about magazines, flyers and brochures for a minute and consider what life would be like if you could touch base with each and every one of your prospective and current clients for next to nothing. I’m referring to eNewsletters.

eNnewsletters are quickly shaping the way businesses market themselves in the online arena. Having a funky looking eNewsletter that is branded to your business is one thing, but it takes a well structured newsletter which communicates at a level appropriate for your readership to really be effective. With this in mind, it goes without saying that slacking on such a simple task can be the sole reason that your newsletter isn’t working for you.

Before we dig too deep into the many ways you can improve your newsletter, we should look at some of the key mistakes people often make when developing a newsletter from scratch. It really comes down to the basics. It’s the simple mistakes that cause the reader to lose interest and click away from your email. Remember, the sole reason for writing an eNewsletter is to gain the readers’ attention and interest. If you can’t do that, then no matter what you write or what images you include, you’ll always be left behind.

Some of the most common mistakes made by business owners and those developing their first newsletter are:

• Bad English – It’s amazing to think that people send out newsletters to thousands of people with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and issues with their punctuation but it happens all the time.
• Lack of consistency – Throwing any type of content in an eNewsletter is never a good idea. So many newsletters lack any real structure thus making it hard for their readers to find the content they like reading on a regular basis.
• Use of big words – Using big words that nobody understands is never a good thing if it means your audience isn’t going to understand what you’re saying.
• Misuse of colour – Placing green text on a red background and making links in your newsletter flash might have looked good after a few quiet wines the night before but your readers definitely won’t agree with your choice of colour when they open up the email first thing the next day.
• No external links – Refusing to link to other content in an eNewsletter is a sure-fire why of ensuring the reader doesn’t visit your website.
• No support for HTML-based email clients – Finally, some eNewsletters get sent as plain text and this really does not aid the reader in distinguishing what is important in your newsletter’s layout and what isn’t.

There are many different elements you can look at when developing an effective newsletter, however most of these are useless unless you’ve got the basics down. The three most important elements to focus on though are structure, communication techniques and external links. These three elements alone will determine the fate of your newsletter as they will ensure you’re providing a level of consistency for your readers, you’re communicating on their level and you’re providing them with additional information should they choose to read more.

So, how can we go about incorporating these three elements into our newsletters? It’s quite simple. We basically need to follow the three rules below.

1. Establish a consistent structure for your eNewsletter

The most important aspect to a newsletter aside from its copy is its structure. Think of it this way. When you read a magazine you like, it often has the same sections usually on the same pages of the magazine. This way you instantly know where to flick to in order to find the content you’re after. The same thing must happen with your newsletter. Without a consistent design, your readership won’t be able to quickly and easily find the content they’re after.

The best way to do this is to establish a few sections for your newsletter that you plan on repeating every month. Such sections may include Company News, Latest Products, Client Testimonials, Article/Tips and Recommended Affiliates. You will also need to work out what order these sections will appear in. In other words, you don’t want to change the order of these sections each time you send out a newsletter, otherwise what’s the point of having them? Your readers will start favoring different sections and will instantly know where to find them if they’re always in the same place.

2. Communicate effectively in your copy

Once you’ve come up with your newsletter’s structure, you need to piece together some effective copy. The main goal here is to write copy that is concise yet interesting. The rule of thumb here is to keep things simple and don’t waffle on. You want your readers to stay interested and ultimately to read your entire newsletter. If you feel they may be losing interest, you may need to review your copy and/or hire a copywriter to weave some magic into your words. After all, their job is to turn your copy into something interesting and also something your readership will understand.

That brings us to our next point. Try to avoid using long words or words your readership may not entirely understand. Although they might seem great and you may feel good knowing what they mean, they’re useless if your readership cannot understand them. The best bet is to have someone read your copy who has no clue about the industry you work in. If they can still understand everything and don’t have any further questions, chances are you’ve hit the nail on the head.

3. Always Link to External Resources

Finally, a good newsletter will always drive the readership back to your website or to other relevant external resources. The best way to do this is with the use of links embedded in your copy.

One good way of achieving this is to introduce summaries or lead-in paragraphs into your newsletter. These seem to work especially well as they raise interest in your reader. If they want to read more, they have to access your website to read the full article. The main purpose of this is to have the reader access your site again and hopefully browse some of the other content you have on your site. It not only builds awareness and exposure but also raises credibility for yourself and your business.

Links to other external resources, affiliates and recommended websites are also great. They show your readers that the newsletter isn’t just all about you and you genuinely want to provide them with other relevant information that they may find interesting. Remember though that links you provide in your newsletter should be relevant to your readership. For example, a newsletter focusing on baby clothes wouldn’t want to provide a link to a car hire website as it wouldn’t be relevant.

At the end of the day, the primary goal you have in developing your newsletter is to keep it consistent, to the point and always relevant to your readership. If you achieve this, you’ll gain a database full of loyal readers who will gladly forward your newsletter to their friends and family and with word of mouth being the best form of marketing we could hope for, you’ve just achieved this for next to nothing.

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