Create a Newsletter in 7 Easy Steps
After spending years in the newsletter and communication business, I know anyone can create a newsletter, but to create a newsletter that gets results and lasts (most die after just a few issues), you’ll need take the following seven steps.
1. Identify exactly what you want readers to do - before you create a newsletter. Do you want them to do something, to think something, or act in a certain way? The more specific, the better. One way to make this process easier is to ask the following two questions: “Do I want change or do I want reinforcement?” and “Do I want to influence thoughts or actions?” So, change or reinforce, thoughts or actions? Think through the four possibilities these two questions raise, and you should find it easy to identify and state your objective.
2. Describe your audience. In some cases this will be easy, but nevertheless, write down some description of the audience before you create a newsletter. In many cases, when you have discretion about the audience, you’ll face a trade-off between audience size and audience response. Generally speaking, the more focused your audience, the better the response. Finding the right balance between size and response can be a challenge when you create a newsletter.
3. Identify topics. Now that you have identified an audience and what you want members of it to do, you should also have a good idea about what subjects to include as you create a newsletter. For a detailed look at content strategies, read, Some content will get the response you want, some won’t. Here’s how to choose the right stuff…
4. Write and lay out your newsletter. Now, here’s what you started out to do, right? To create a newsletter by writing and laying it out, whether it’s electronic or printed? Great, but don’t skip the first three steps, because if you start here, at Step 4, your chances of failure are high.
5. Proofread, check, proofread, check. To get readers to respond, you need credibility and to get credibility, you must have a ‘clean’ newsletter, one without mistakes, misspellings, and other glitches. Spellcheck is one obvious solution. And if you can, get someone else to read your newsletter; even the best of us can overlook our own mistakes when we create a newsletter.
6. Print/mail/distribute. An obvious step to be sure, but there’s another element I’d like you to consider in the ‘create a newsletter’ process: How many readers actually read, or at least opened, your newsletter? The ratio of read newsletters to distributed newsletters will be key to getting the response you want. If you distribute your newsletter on or through the Internet, some services now offer reports on ‘open rates’ which will tell you what percentage of your readers actually opened your newsletter.
7. Evaluate. The final step, as we create a newsletter, is to evaluate the results. We started it with the aim of getting someone to do something. Did that happen? Did we get a positive return for the time and money invested? Without some kind of feedback or evaluation, it’s impossible to know if the newsletter was worth the effort.
Summing up, we’ve looked at seven critical steps to take when we create a newsletter. If we follow them, we should have a publication that amply rewards us. I know it’s tempting to jump in and just start writing or designing, but to create a newsletter without going through each step is to start one that likely will not get the response you want and not last beyond the first few issues.
January 26th, 2008, posted by admin