Does Your Company Have a Newsletter or Snoozeletter?

A Helpful Kick-in-the-Pants to Optimizing Your Monthly Blabberzine.

Everyone now a days has a e-newsletter. The grocer. Your five banks you do business with. The town attorney and probably his shrink.

You probably have one too.

As this area of advertising and pr is gaining momentum, companies are finding it harder to capture attention from an increasingly fickle and trigger-happy recipient. Competition for attention is vying for the 3-second right-click and delete, and your reader's spam folder is just a drag and drop away.

To keep your readers attention, keep it fresh while staying consistent with some critical details. Here are a few helpful we have learned from experience (and continue to learn):

K.I.S.S.: "Keep it simple, stupid." Make sure your logo and contact information is prominent and easy to find. If you have named your newsletter, make sure it doesn't fall too far off the apple cart (your business, silly). Believe it or not, many a newsletter author gets caught up in their novels and forgets this teeny-weeny detail.

Newsworthiness- Do enquiring minds want to know anything on the first page of your e-newsletter? Why do Star, Enquirer and the other tabloids make billions at the checkout stand? Quit selling and tell stories. Juicy ones.

Attention: For us, articles on best practices in human resources don't get much action. The light at the end of the tunnelvision came when we moved to alluring pictures and an interesting headlines like, "Top Ten Reasons Your Employees Will Sue You."

Consistency: Keep your layout clean and consistent. Colors too. This will train your readers how to scan your table of contents. Do you even have a TOC? Think of your favorite magazine/paper and how they have trained you to scan for articles of interest (is it on the cover on inside a few pages?)

Branding: Don't sell soap or girl scout cookies as you will confuse your market. Even your clients will think you have lost your focus. Do publish quick and easy- to-read articles, surveys and stories that reinforce your brand promise and remind the public what your #1 deliverable is.

Lesson learned: At Emplicity we have learned to put our eggs in one basket. Marketing the concept of simplicity (in payroll, workers' compensation, human resources outsourcing and health insurance) has taken new depths in applying that constant thumbprint through our marketing efforts -audio, web, print, and even on our voicemail greetings. Try articles or surveys that reinforce your brand statement, like "7 Timesavers to Simplify your HR."

Timing: Since a lot of spammers do their work on off hours, send your newsletter mid-day, mid week. How many unsolicited emails did you open up on Monday morning? Emails from unwanted solicitors typically pile up and hit your when you open up Outlook first thing in the morning. It is much easier to delete your email when it's amongst 10 other Viagra ads.

Free: Everyone wants something for nothing, especially frugal business owners. Step up your marketing efforts with the big boys like Gevity, Trinet and Administaff and give away some valuable tips or articles of interest.

Got time? Try hiring or firing tips or strategies. Write a whitepaper or ask an expert (fortunately attorneys fit into this category) to donate their articles that your clients will find interesting.

Soften the Sale- are you selling hard, or are you offering solutions? Think of how many unwanted emails you get during the day and how fast you scan them. In addition to sharing tips and ideas to make them more efficient, profitable and grandiose, make sure that you provide them with an option to get more information on your services.

Marketing Tip: Providing a link to Emplicity's CHOICE program has garnered our sales department leads and click-throughs to our home page.

Creating trust- trust is subtly different to value - do your prospects believe that your company cares about them? How do you establish credibility? How do you build your list with integrity? Try opt-in programs and offer a signup form on the front of your website (and in your NEWS section)

Showing stability- your prospects will want to buy from companies they perceive as reliable, long-term suppliers with stable products, prices and support. Stories and articles (especially success stories, awards your firm have received) that foster your company's success will make people feel good about your brand.

Try this: Make sure you highlight any philanthropic events that you sponsor. I'm a sucker for companies that give back to the community and make the world a better place.

Outsource it- With competing priorities and no one to shoulder the newsletter, I have found relief in calling upon my PR firm to champion the cause. Whenever I have a great idea or story, I forward a skeleton to my contact, Shannon Widor at KCOMM (Shannon@kanatsiz.com). He is great about cleaning up my articles, suggesting alternative views and doing research on critical subject matter. Plus he drives the deadline, something I could never do myself.

Highlight Your Clients- this helps to explain your target market, and gives your client free PR. Readers will naturally try to picture themselves as a client of yours. Must one aspire to be a on your client list?

Tip: avoid highlighting clients that are NOT A GOOD FIT. For this reason, we do not highlight clients with high-risk workplaces. (such as scaffolding, fear-factor shows, dynamite manufacturing) Also, if your competitors are on your list, expect your clients to get a competitive quote.

Employee of the Month- preferably a fun, friendly, "G" rated feature that your clients would like to see. (Miss March just doesn't work in human resources companies) This gives them the story (and personal touch) on who they have been talking to for the past 3 years. A little background on education, home town, music and family is enough. People out there want to know who they are dealing with.

Interesting statistic: Emplicity's "Employee of the Month" features have consistently ranked the highest in click-throughs. These quick and easy to read bullet point articles are simple and fun to write. Be prepared to hear about it, too. When our payroll manager was featured, clients got a kick out of Traci's choice in music-metal rock superstars Metallica.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)- submit your articles and newsletters to Google, Yahoo and MSN and get your content indexed. After your first draft, go back and surgically insert your top key words. (search terms that your customer would type into Google to find you) Although this has as much finesse as painting with rulers, your salespeople will like the results on the back end.

Keep Count: Have a meeting with your web experts once a month to review your stat server reports on your newsletter campaign, one by one. What worked, and which articles gained you the most interest? How many leads were developed? What did the replies say? How many opted out from your emails?

Personal Tip: Don't feel bad if your wife opts out. She still loves you even though she doesn't want to read your monthly digest. She probably would rather hear it from you personally, anyway.

VT

Vic Tanon is the Chief Simplicity Officer for Emplicity, a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) headquartered in Irvine, California. With a brand promise of "employee management made simple," Emplicity employs over 30 corporate employees and is responsible for the administration and co-employment of over 2,500 employees throughout the United States. He may be reached at cso@emplicity.com.


Back to Home »