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| Marketing your Franchise Online - Part 1 10 Useful Guidelines for Creating Successful E-Newsletters Author: Franchise Finder Team |
E-newsletters are excellent ways to market your product or service and to stay in touch with your clients or potential clients. Many businesses have started to use this marketing tool and indeed it should be encouraged because people are becoming increasingly computer, web and email savvy! There are however a few guidelines that one should follow in order to create a successful e-newsletter. Here are 10 Top Guidelines. |
| Make your e-newsletters relevant and regular. Ensure that the content is practical and useful to the reader - you want people to look forward to receiving your newsletter. You need to be consistent and send out your newsletters regularly but also remember that you don't want to hound the reader with a newsletter every second day! I would recommend a newsletter to be sent out on a monthly basis for most businesses or every two weeks in some cases. |
| Ensure subscribers of your privacy policy. The policy could appear on your website and/or at the bottom of any email newsletter. Ensure subscribers that their email addresses are private and that they will not be sold or given away to any party. |
| Use shorter sentences and paragraphs. Keep paragraphs to less than 6 lines. Keep ideas simple and clear, with basic wording and clear language. |
| Use lists! Use numbers or bullet points to keep things clear. As people scroll up and down their screen, give them reference points. Make it easy to navigate your material. |
| Use a standard banner for your newsletter. The first screen (first impression) of your letter must be consistent from one issue to the next. Make it pleasant, give the essential info (title, your name, perhaps the date or issue number), and keep it simple. |
| Use a table of contents. Again, think in terms of easy navigation. Use clever titles to catch the reader's interest, and give them a map to help them find the material that interests them most! |
| Use a clean layout. Use distinctive marks to separate each section. Use lots of white space. Surround your best ideas with blank space, to draw the eye to them. |
| Unsubscribe option Always offer your subscribers an unsubscribe option and make this as easy as possible to do. You don't want to frustrate people by sending them emails that they would rather not read. |
| Remember to think carefully about your subject line. Spam filters are extremely clever these days and scrutinize your subject line for Spam Indicators. To avoid been filtered as spam, do not use any punctuation in the subject line such as question or exclamation marks. Try not to avoid using calls to action such as"Get," "Open," "Download," "Buy," "Save," Make, "Take" and "Respond." Then there are the pronouns - I'm sure you would think that these words would be relatively harmless but you are wrong. Do not use the words "You," "Your" and "I" as the first word in the subject line. Lastly, there is the word "Free" - this is a guarateed to get your email filtered out as spam. |
| In your newsletter, it's vital to have relevant content, but in many ways it's even more important to present it elegantly. Take the time to present your great ideas as attractively as possible. |