photo credit: CJ Sorg

I can’t wait.  It’s the first week of the month and that means I can expect my favorite newsletter to arrive in my mailbox by Friday of this week.  Secretly every day this week I’ll anticipate the arrival of the mail hoping it might show up early.

The day it arrives I put everything aside and rip open the envelop with gleeful anticipation.  It’s like having a mystery box arrive in my mailbox filled with unexpected goodies.  Who knows what treasures I’ll find inside!  I can’t wait to devour yet savor every single word.

Is that how your newsletter recipients feel about your newsletter?  Most businesses in the service industry have a newsletter.  It’s a really good idea if you know why you have one and what you want to accomplish through it.

The purpose of your newsletter is to extend and strengthen your relationship with prospects and clients.  It keeps you in front of them on a regular basis.   For clients, it reinforces their good decision and makes them feel good about you.  When you do it well your newsletter leads to more business and referrals.

How do you get your newsletter to do what you want it to?  As Patsi Krakoff  points out, when your newsletter doesn’t grab the interest of your readers it’s a wasted effort.  If you don’t show them with their very first newsletter it’s worth their time they’ll throw every issue after that directly in the garbage unopened.  OUCH!  A costly mistake.

Here are a few questions you can ask to stimulate how you develop your newsletter.  When you’re deciding what you’ll write about, how you’ll put your newsletter together, and the actions you want them to take because they’ve read your newsletter ask yourself these questions.

• How can I build curiosity around what I want to communicate?
• What unanswered questions do my readers have, and how can I answer one of those questions?
• How can I use a story to make my point in an interesting way?
• What existing beliefs can I reinforce through the content I’m sharing?
• How can I make them laugh about themselves or their circumstances?

“There are things of deadly earnest that can only be safely mentioned under cover of a joke”

J. J. Procter

Imagine your readers waiting by their mail boxes in anticipation for your newsletter.  Just like me, they save every issue and wouldn’t think of giving even one away.  But they will tell others about it, and they’ll tell them how to get their own issue.  It’s the Law of Reciprocity working in your favor.

Communication is measured by the action produced.   How can one of your readers reach out to you?  When they do how will you measure the response your request for action produced?  Complete the circle.  Build the interest, ask for action, measure the results.   

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under sales coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.