Newsletters

This section includes the following tidbits about newsletters:

• marketing with newsletters
• better captions
• royalty-free photos
• keeping newsletters fresh
• are newsletters dead

Marketing with newsletters

A special May 29 report on direct mail in Marketing showed how Molson appealed to O'Keefe drinkers with a newsletter on, of all things, outdoor sports.

The brewery surveyed its customers and found that many of them are interested in the outdoors. The resulting newsletter, called Le Bulletin, is so full of valuable information that recipients are beginning to collect them.

The newsletter rewards customer loyalty and subtly flogs the product. Says Marketing, "As a highly targeted piece of marketing, the newsletter is coming into its own as an effective way for a company to maintain a relationship with its public."

Meanwhile, the Chicago-based Sales & Marketing Executive Report suggests a number of ways that newsletters can be used to market products and services.

• Please current customers by giving them the latest information on your field
• Add extra benefit by giving the newsletter free to valued clients.
• Educate prospects about your products and by offering your expertise.
• Provide more detailed product information than can be fitted into a brochure.
• Increase word-of-mouth advertising as newsletters are passed on to at least three more readers.

Using better captions

We'll admit it. We're guilty of this.

Photos and illustrations are among the last things you do for your newsletter, and captions are the very last of all. The result? Dull captions.

But captions are among the most highly read parts of any newsletter. And good captions have a demonstrated affect on the number of people who read the attached stories.

The August 1998 Editorial Eye looked at the art of fine captioning. Instead of simply identifying the guy in the mug shot, or the mob of people in the group shot, instead tell your reader what those people do. How does that character in the picture affect your readers? That's your caption.

Royalty-free photos

Photography can make a newsletter editor's life miserable.

We all know that good photos add tremendously to the image and appeal of a newsletter. But not many of us are good photographers, and the pictures we get from the sources ... well, they often leave much to be desired.

You can hire a professional, but setting the fee can sometimes be more complicated than filling out your tax forms, especially if you plan to HTML your newsletter as well.

On the other hand, you can buy royalty-free images on the Internet. The January 1999 issue of Editorial Eye mentions two sites where you can search for images by keyword and buy photos online. (See below.)

Having checked the sites out, I found the images rather uninspiring, but certainly of better quality than I could manage. The main drawback, though, is that none of the images I found exactly matched what I had in mind. Although it costs less to buy photography online, if I had the budget and a very specific image I wanted, I'd probably hire a pro.

But it's certainly nice to know that there is a quick, cheap option just a few clicks away.

• http://www.royaltyfreephotos.com/
• http://www.photosphere.com/

Keeping newsletters fresh

The August 1999 issue of "The Editorial Eye" reminds us that if we're bored producing a newsletter, odds are our audience is bored reading it. EE offers a few tips for livening things up.

1) Refurbish the landscape: Sometimes a redesign is in order, especially as design trends change and new looks become fashionable.

2) Rejuvenate the reporting: Look for new angles to old stories. Ask subject matter experts to write stories. Consider new features.

3) Think more about what you're doing: Read other newsletters and look for ideas you can adapt. As always, the best writers are the most avid readers.

Are newsletters dead?

On March 25, the Wall Street Journal noticed that large corporations are reaching their employees with closed-circuit TV, faxes and e-mail instead of with printed newsletters.

However, while the WSJ speculates that this is the end of employee newsletters, David Murray of the Ragan Report wryly observes that he "fondly recall[s] reading 'employee newsletters are obsolete' stories in every decade since communicators began panting wildly about video in the 1960s."

On a more positive note, on March 20 WSJ lauded the PR staff at General Mills for using PR as a cost-effective marketing tool, but many communicators objected to the article's emphasis on media stunts.

Reaching older readers

Not only do older readers need larger text but, according to American Demographics, they prefer more white space and find it harder to see subtle colour contrasts such as pink on red.

Persuading on paper

Marcia Yudkin's Persuading on Paper ($11.95, 375 Hudson Street, NY NY 10014) offers these tips.

• Answer a prospect's number-one question, "What's in it for me?"
• Fill in these blanks: I'm the only one who ___.
• Asks "Says who" of your marketing claims and replace any that are answered "Says me," "Says no-one," or "Says someone my audience doesn't trust."
• Write copy with quick readers in mind.
• Choose emotional words over intellectual ones.
• Don't skimp on white space.

Cornerstone is a writing and editing firm that uses marketing and PR principles to create "words you can build your business on."

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