10 Signs this is Your First Newsletter

photo by photosteve101

I'm such a newsletter critic. I think it makes me better at what I do - learning from others' good and bad examples. Here are the things that often stand out during my critiques:
  1. You didn't use a bulk email application.
    This is such a big mistake, it deserves its own post to list all the reasons why!
  2. You didn't include a link to subscribe.
    If your newsletter is good, your readers will share it with their friends. Don’t make those friends have to hunt for your sign-up form. Not everyone is tenacious.
  3. You used a misleading subject line.
    Perhaps you felt that you had to trick people into opening your newsletter. Don’t do this! Readers will feel like they've been duped if you don’t deliver on the promise in your subject line.
  4. I see obvious errors.
    There are spelling errors and, oops, a hyperlink doesn't work. Always get another set of eyes to check your newsletter. Don’t forget to click on all the hyperlinks. Don’t get complacent about this over time. Mistakes stand out!
  5. You didn't include social media sharing links.
    You’re missing out on the opportunity to extend the reach of your newsletter beyond your subscriber list. If your content is interesting, people will share your content… but only if you give them a quick, simple way to do it.
  6. You didn't include social connecting links.
    You’re missing another opportunity to increase your fan base. Make it simple for them to find and follow you online. Include direct links to all of your social media accounts and make those accounts public.
  7. There’s no value!
    Nothing in here appeals to me or piques my interest. I've seen some of it before. And stop talking so much about yourself.
  8. It looks plain icky.
    It’s got a poor design and even worse, poor formatting. You've used colours that make reading difficult. All the text is jammed against the borders and... how many different fonts did you use?
  9. I’m confused! Too many different calls-to-action.
    I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do next… or first? Having too many choices causes indecision and inaction.
  10. There’s no ‘read online’ link.
    That means no longevity and some folks simply won't be able to read your newsletter.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

That's Not What I Wanted to Hear

Image
The best boss I ever had told me I was a crappy listener. Those weren't the exact words he used, but Carlos was always blunt and to-the-point during performance reviews. I was young and confident... and completely surprised to be told I had this failing. After surprise came denial, reluctant acceptance, and finally, a desire to learn to do better. Twenty-five years later, I recall that discussion with both chagrin and fondness. I'm still not a great listener but I'm a better listener than I was then. And I'll continue to improve. Now, as a small business owner, I'm so very fortunate to have a few strong people supporting me who have no fear of telling me when something is not so good. Feedback and advice are both important for doing good work and continuing to improve. Whether it's what we want to hear or not, honest, thoughtful feedback comes from people who truly care about our success. Whether you are a new business owner or an experienced pro, inve...
Keep reading »

Curate to Become a Trusted Resource

Image
Whatever your specific goals are, your content needs to get read to have any impact and be valuable . It must be useful and interesting to get read. It must get read many times ( consistency ) to be trusted. You want to be that trusted resource. I have a trusted resource for social media updates which is a great example of valuable curated content. Do any of us have time to keep up with all of the changes to the social media platforms? Yet we use them every day. I like to know about new functionality and new apps, but I don't have time to keep up. Getting a point form summary of all the changes in my inbox once a month is extremely valuable. It saves me time, I can dig deeper if I want, and I can use the information to make decisions about my social media strategy. Curating content is a great strategy for providing timely updates about things that change fast. ( Tweet This ) social media update section in newsletter Want to see this great example? Click here to view Twi...
Keep reading »

Creating Content that is Useful

Image
Your newsletter has to be both useful and interesting to be successful. If one of your goals is to be seen as an expert, consider that the usefulness of your content can have a big impact. What types of content are useful? Here are some suggestions. Hot-off-the-press information: Timeliness is important if you have access to information (or photos) in advance of your target market. How-to’s, quick tips, detailed instructions, diagrams: The goal here is to save your readers time and effort – to shortcut the learning curve. Examples, case studies, templates, worksheets, maps, directions: You can make use of document-sharing and photo-sharing applications to provide access. An example of this would be our own newsletter gallery on Flickr .   Links to useful resources and people: Share exceptional items that you have created or already vetted. Reviews, summaries and recommendations: You can do this for books, articles, white papers, videos, TV/radio shows, and mo...
Keep reading »

My Essential Small Business Tools (Part 1)

Image
Whenever I get together with other business owners over lunch or coffee, the conversation often flows to a discussion of how to be more productive. What processes are we using? What contractors are helping? And what tools or apps are useful? I love this sharing of ideas and found out about many of the tools I use regularly from these chats. Those listed below are ones that I use at least weekly - often daily - and consider essential to managing my business. Google Calendar In the newsletter business, we have to keep track of a lot of dates - reminder dates, preparation dates and issue dates - for all our clients on varying schedules. Google Calendar has been invaluable, not only as an organizational and tracking tool, but also as a communication tool because it lets me share my calendars with work colleagues. I have my own calendar of appointments and events, plus a calendar to track all of the important newsletter dates. I use the email and pop-up reminders so I don’t forget a...
Keep reading »

A Few Good Reasons

Image
"Why do I care if I get along with my co-workers or not?" This bold statement came from a young woman participating in a workshop I was delivering at a Halifax cosmetology school a couple of years ago. It was more of a statement than a question. Oddly, it actually shut me up for several seconds. Not because I didn't know the answer but because I was surprised that she didn't. That day we brainstormed 6 key reasons why getting along with other people is critical to any success. Working together, we can achieve these things that we cannot accomplish alone: More creative solutions. When we bounce ideas off each other, we arrive at better solutions than we would alone. Implementing complex plans and strategies. Because the work can be divided, together we can tackle complex projects more effectively than we can alone. Learning from others' skills and experiences. When we work with others, we also learn from others. Endurance. If one person is resp...
Keep reading »

The Speed of eMail

Image
When I sent out my last newsletter, almost 400 people opened it in the first 2 hours. If you need to reach a lot of people fast and at the same time, email is definitely the medium of choice. For one thing, sending an email is faster and easier than phoning 400 people. (My jaw just clenched in horror!) And broadcasting a tweet or Facebook post is not the same as putting a message in someone’s inbox; it’s hit or miss. Direct mail is costly and the results are minimal. Some say the ROI on email marketing is over $40 for every $1 spent. I haven’t gotten those results for myself (yet) but I have seen some very quantifiable successes . For example, it’s easy to calculate your ROI when selling event tickets. Let's say you spend $300 to sell $6000 worth of tickets, which is a pretty darn good return. More to the point, consider if - and how - you’ll sell all those tickets if not by email. One of the big benefits of email over other options - the phone, social media, snail ...
Keep reading »

The Worst Thing About Moving My Website to WordPress

Image
There have been many good things about moving my website to a WordPress platform late last fall. And there have been a few frustrating things. I'd been doing a pretty good job of ignoring some of those frustrating things until I received an email from Google Search Console with the subject line:  Increase in "404" pages on daleyprogress.com . Oh no! That sounded pretty ominous. The accompanying graph was even more so. Here's the backstory: all my website links changed with the move . Previously my pages all ended with '.html' and now that's truncated. There's a plug-in for redirecting when people click on an old link out there somewhere, so I set that up for every current page. I also had to move several documents and files hosted on my old site to the new one, and then go change all those links on my various blog posts about them. Tedious, painful work but I thought I had it handled. It turned out I was so very wrong. These '404 errors...
Keep reading »

Even Good Advice Expires

Image
One of the questions I get asked the most is, "When is the best time to send out my newsletter?" It's a great question because the timing really is important. During a lunch and learn workshop a few years ago, I suggested that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays were best, at about 9:45am. At the time that tended to be the rough schedule I followed for myself and some of my customers. I even said that I felt Wednesdays were the better than Tuesdays and Thursdays. Two weeks later on Wednesday morning at exactly 9:45am, I received 3 newsletters - one I sent on behalf of a client, and two others from workshop attendees. Suddenly 9:45am on Wednesdays seemed not quite as stellar. It's a paradox that the more a piece of advice becomes popular, and the more it's implemented, the less effective it may become. There are many  other reasons for good advice to expire, mostly to do with changing conditions or specific situations. Check that your source of advice i...
Keep reading »

What Colour is That?

Image
I get into some interesting discussions with clients and friends about colours . The fact is that we can do a lot to make sure the colours in our branding are consistent wherever used online. And we can do the same for our print materials. Consistency is the key because none of us see colours quite the same as anyone else. First there's the way they appear to us because of the way our eyes work . "Colour (color) blindness (colour vision deficiency, or CVD) affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women in the world." (source: colourblindawareness.org ). About 4.5% of the population is affected by some form of colour blindness, most of them men. And it's not all black and white and grey - there are different types of colour blindness. Then there's our perceptions about certain colours, and even shades of those colours. For example, baby pink and soft mauve aren't typically associated with business, unless you own a baby boutique. Red is ass...
Keep reading »

How to Recycle your Ideas

Image
This is the 250th article I've written for my own blog, started way back in May 2010. Do you think each of these 250 articles is an original idea? Not by a long shot. Even if you've been following this blog for awhile, there are many older articles that you've never seen. Some may be outdated and some may be irrelevant. But some of those articles have great ideas... and you won't know unless I recycle those ideas into my current posts. That's the strategic reason to recycle your ideas . It's not just something to do when you're stuck for something to write about . In order to stay a bit organized, I typically look back to what I wrote about in the same month last year. Often I'll find something I haven't written about since - a good candidate for recycling. The goal is not to simply re-write an article, but rather to expand on the idea . Here are some ways to think about that: Does the article still make sense? Or has it become outdated ...
Keep reading »