Big business, small business, non-profit business and the self-employed, could all improve their communications by running one or several business newsletters.
There are so many options too. Promotional newsletters, employee newsletters, customer newsletters… the list of possibilities is practically endless.
Weighing Up The Pros And Cons
To get to the point where an owner or manager decides on a certain course of action to promote her business, it is first necessary to ascertain the pros and cons involved.
So what needs to be taken into account when evaluating business newsletters (or business ezines) as promotional tools?
After all, it’s not an enterprise to be embarked upon lightly. In order to produce a newsletter that will sustain a reasonable level of readership, a lot of work is likely to be involved in the planning stage as well as on an ongoing basis.
On the other hand, the potential rewards are considerable; often far outweighing the effort and costs involved.
Primary Considerations
Newsletters really come into their own as tools for communicating with members of a group. In the case of business newsletters the group concerned is invariably made up of customers and potential customers. The sorts of questions that need to be asked, therefore, are:
- Who are the members of the group (defined by age, gender, income level, religion or any other parameters)?
- What main interest do they have in common?
- What are their secondary, or peripheral, interests?
Objectives
Define the aim of the newsletter. Is it mainly to disseminate information or to generate an atmosphere of goodwill and a favorable trading environment (bearing in mind that any good business newsletter will have these objectives to a lesser or greater degree)?
If the aim is to sell something, in the direct sense, then a newsletter is the wrong vehicle to choose. Disguising a brochure or catalog as a newsletter not only doesn’t work, it is usually counterproductive.
How the company or organization is perceived by the readership, and what the preferred perception is, would also be taken into account when defining the objective.
Planning
Regularity of production is a vital component of successful newsletter marketing. How often it should be produced though, depends on the particular field of endeavor, as well as on other variables such as seasonal considerations, cost etc. As regards content, sourcing suitable material needs to be undertaken in advance and the means of copy preparation decided on (e.g. is the business owner going to write all, some, or none of the newsletter content?). It would be usual also to draw up a suitable schedule or calendar of features for inclusion at this stage.
Budgeting
Decisions that need to be considered in order to properly budget for your newsletter include how it is to be distributed (hard copy or online publication), how it is to be formatted and printed, the proportion of illustrations to text, how many colors to use, anticipated circulation figures, how many pages, and many other factors.
Evaluation
Evaluating the viability of using newsletters to promote a particular business will help to determine whether it’s a course worth pursuing. For most businesses, it usually proves a very attractive means indeed of getting across a positive message about a company and its dealings.
However, evaluation is an ongoing thing. There should always be ways of measuring readership responses over and above the circulation numbers.
One of the most effective ways is by interactive features such as a ‘letters to the editor’ section or simple competitions and quizzes etc. It is by these means that an owner or manager can monitor the effectiveness of the newsletter’s penetration into the minds of its readers—and therefore its penetration into the market.