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Building strong relationships with your community is key to your success. Social media, landing page, testimonials, lead magnet … the tools are endless! Let’s talk about the newsletter and how to get the best out of it.

Value-added content

The newsletter allows you to provide value-added content to your followers and subscribers. You need to engage your customers in order for them to even open your email, let alone read it. What do they like, what do they need? For example, if your product is gluten free flour, then include a recipe using gluten free flour or a video on how to bake a pie using gluten free flour.

Offer advice, your expertise and relevant information, do not not use your newsletter as a sales tool only. Make sure you always have your target audience in mind. If you are a physio or a Pilates teacher, provide some tips on managing back pain or a video with some easy exercises. It will go a long way in making your customers feel that you are giving, not just taking. It might feel counter intuitive but people like to get things for free, and you are more likely to get their interest and their custom that way.

Finally, be consistent by sending your newsletter on a regular basis as customers are creatures of habit and like predictability. Find a good balance between too often and too seldom, and above all avoid randomness. You need to ensure your content is of good quality, so publishing your newsletter every week is just putting pressure on you to produce pertinent content. Adversely, your audience will disengage and loose interest if you send your newsletter too irregularly.

Don’t forget your branding

Once you have decided on what your content will be, you have to spend time making sure your message comes across. Here are a few useful tips to bear in mind when publishing a successful and engaging newsletter:

– a catchy subject line and other important topics highlights at the top of your email

– a table of content with anchor links to the relevant articles

– call-to-action buttons after each article. Use the power of social network and allow your customers to share with their network, allowing them to spread information via email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+

– because a high proportion of newsletters are read on a mobile these days make sure that the most important information is on the left hand column and keep your width close to 500 pixels.

– be consistent in your branding, in terms of colours and typography. Avoid fussy fonts, and use font size 22 for headers and 13 for the body of text.

Once again, consistency is key to a successful communication with your customers.

Case study

A couple of weeks ago, one of my customer asked me to work on her newsletter strategy. She was already active on social media but wanted to engage differently with her clients on a regular basis, sharing news about Pilates, about the Studio, about the retreats that she organises and giving information on affiliate products on sale. She wanted to have a list of followers that she could grow and also generate traffic to her website and social media accounts.

We agreed on using MailChimp software.  She got good feedback and It also fitted her tight budget and allowed her to have up to 2,000 subscribers and send 12,000 emails per month for free.

We did the first one together to make sure she understood all the stages for newsletter creation and potential pitfalls. Due to anti-spam rules, I advised the need to get her clients to subscribe to her newsletter, thereby giving her consent to use their email address. We embedded a subscribe form on her website, encouraging her followers to subscribe to her newsletter.

My client could have done all the process by herself! She asked me to help her to save some time and be more efficient. As a busy mum, wife and Pilates Studio manager, she needed someone to understand her business and her requirements, and present a relevant solution that responded to those needs, within budget. By taking on a task that would have taken her numerous hours, I freed her to do what she does best. I also gave her the peace of mind that somebody was there to help, every step of the way.

The author

My name is Elisabeth Morice and I am a virtual assistant. As such I provide auto entrepreneurs and small businesses with business and administrative support and project collaboration. Contact me at elisabeth_morice@hotmail.com for further info.

My tips:

Before you decide on a Marketing automation tool, shop around. There are plenty of free versions available that are very good for small budgets and are perfectly adequate to begin with. MailChimp was the software my client and I chose, but it could have been AWeber, ConvertKit or Constant Contact. There are lots of comparison sites such as this one to help you in your choice:http://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-email-marketing-services/.