Newsletter

75 BEST NEwSlETTEr SuccESS STraTEgiES
by Linda Claire Puig
President, Claire Communications

© 2009 Claire Communications

75 BEST NEwSlETTEr SuccESS STraTEgiES
No other tool has as much marketing mojo as the newsletter.
Nothing like starting with a bold statement! But just consider a few of the marketing “tasks” a good newsletter performs: • Positions you as a trusted expert andreinforces your credibility. • Activates your existing referral sources and introduces you in a powerful way to new referral sources and potential clients. • Increases your visibility and keeps your name before your community. • Maintains a vital link with current clients and reminds past clients of your availability and willingness to help. • Allows people to get to know and trust you over time. •Distinguishes you from others in your field who do not have a newsletter. • Serves as a community-building vehicle and a dynamite public relations tool. • Educates rather than sells. (This fact makes them easy for sales-shy service professionals to use.) • Reinforces your branding, or the look, feel and impression people get of you. • Informs people about you and your practice, and promotesclasses, workshops groups, books and other services. • Is perceived as a gift because it adds value to people’s lives. • Keeps you top-of-mind so that when people need what you offer, they think of you first. These benefits of a newsletter don’t just come from HAVING a newsletter. To derive the most value from such a power-packed tool, you need to know how to use it well, how to use itstrategically. Below are 75 of the best ways to USE a newsletter so that you wring every ounce of effectiveness from it! These strategies have all been used successfully by the people I work with—coaches, mental health professionals, solo-entrepreneurs, speakers/trainers…people engaged in helping others. And by
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successfully, I mean that they used theirnewsletters—either the ones we provided them, or the ones they created in our training camps—to get more clients, KEEP more clients and grow their businesses. You don’t have to use ALL of these strategies below…if you use even 20, you’ll be using your newsletter more effectively than most professionals I see! Put as many as possible into practice and see your business flourish! IMPORTANT NOTE: Thislist includes strategies for using both print and email newsletters (also known as ezines). If you are convinced that one format over the other is the way to go, I encourage you to suspend your opinions for the duration of this report. You may discover suggestions you hadn’t yet considered—in a format you hadn’t considered—that would be perfect for your needs and circumstances! Just keep an openmind...the right format(s) for you will reveal themselves through this document. On to the strategies…

general Newsletter “Best Practices”
These newsletter strategies work regardless of the format you’ve chosen. Taken as a whole, they form the foundation of newsletter marketing “best practices.” 1. Send your newsletter consistently. Like medicine, there must be a consistent “dose” of you in thebloodstream! 2. Send your newsletter often enough. That means at least monthly for ezines (electronic newsletters) and quarterly for print (bi-monthly is better). Less often and it’s like re-introducing yourself all over again with each issue. 3. Be sure to keep the main focus of your newsletter on educating people. When you educate rather than promote, people respect and value you and yournewsletters. 4. Do promote some. You’ll miss a valuable opportunity if you don’t let people know how they can continue their relationship with you. Just keep promotional content to about 25-30%. 5. Be generous with your knowledge. Don’t “give away the store” but do give plenty of value, whether you write your own articles or use our Ready2Go Articles. 6. Make sure your newsletter is well-written and...