JBA Central Blog System

Okay, for a few minutes, we'll do the thinking for you. Here are some content ideas to help you add spunk to a stale newsletter and solicit some reader response. In other words, here's what people want to read:

1. TIPS on how to do something better, namely, make better use of your product or service.

2. SOLUTIONS to commonly identified problems.

3. HOW-TO perform a task or use a product.

4. PREDICT the future as it relates to your field of expertise, then write about whether your forecasts were valid later on.

5. OFFER AN OPINION on something in the news or another relevant topic.

6. DO A CASE STUDY highlighting your product or service.

7. SURVEYS get you valuable feedback.

8. EDUCATE readers with learning resources in the forms of articles and links.

9. EVENTS related to your sector and the readers' interests.

10. INTERVIEW experts and people of interest.

11. NEWS is safe, just make sure you present it in a unique way.

12. QUIZZES are fun and gage expertise in a relevant subject.

13. LISTS, like this one, provide easily digestible information.

For those inevitable times when you're too busy to develop on-the-fly content for your e-newsletters, it's not a bad idea to have a content reserve. When you're in a tight spot, it's nice to be able to plug in some pre-packaged material so you can keep your mailings on track. Your emergency stash can contain anything from whole articles to whole newsletters.
For those who choose to create their newsletters in advance, MNB has a neat tool called Auto Series which will send your pre-created newsletters at specified intervals. To borrow a slogan from a popular "as seen on TV" rotisserie company, you just "set it and forget it!" It really is a beautiful thing.
Just remember, reserves get depleted if too often relied upon, so use your stash sparingly. Furthermore, don't use your reserve as an excuse to avoid developing timely content. Reserve articles are usually quite general insomuch as although they are relevant, they tend to lack a current, newsworthy element. This is why it's important to allow time to add in at least a pinch of up-to-the-minute content in every email you send.

When your subscribers aren't in the mood to buy, your e-newsletter should still be interesting enough to garner a few moments of their attention.
Communication is the bottom line; buyer conversion is the icing on the cake. When your readers aren't in purchasing mode, relevant and interesting content may be all you have to fall back on. This is what builds the trust and appeal that propels those future sales.
If your readers are bored by your newsletter, either because it's saturated with promotions or they find it difficult to apply to their immediate needs and interests, you can safely predict that they probably won't open it again. Furthermore, they might just give their business to a competitor that's managed to keep their attention.
A tried and true method of keeping subscriber interest is list segmentation. Dividing your recipients into categories based on their proclaimed interests and how they have interacted with your newsletter/website is the best way to know how to formulate the range of topics, media and promotions you earnestly send their way.
Send surveys to get reader feedback and study your reports carefully so you'll know how to hone your content accordingly. If a particular subject line made open rates soar, you know how to focus future content.
Your readers will appreciate the fact that you're acknowledging their interests and not just trying to make another sell.

As we linger here in that limbo between the holidays and the new year, perhaps you're considering a resolution or two to help you hit the ground running in 2008. If you're an e-marketer, no doubt one of your resolutions is to find new and effective ways to build customers online.
E-marketers understand that the key to building an online customer base is knowing what people want. More people use the Web for communication than for the purchasing of goods and services. As a whole, we're hesitant to trust what we cannot see or touch. And rightly so.
Many people have had bad experiences after choosing to blindly trust individuals and companies who tout their integrity over the Internet. Too many people have been scammed out of their money--even their identities. Most of us, at some point, have been spammed to death by communications we didn't request. We have a lot of work to do to fortify that trust again.
Your objective as an e-marketer is to come up with innovative ways to build trust and then deliver on your promise with excellent products and ethical communication practices. MyNewsletterBuilder's objective is to help you.
Email has revolutionized business tactics so that online retailers have to constantly learn new ways to communicate in a manner that will eventually convert readers to repeat buyers. Your success depends on your strategy.
Check this blog frequently for fresh perspectives in e-marketing.
Wishing you peace and prosperity in the new year!

Before hitting that send button, make sure your newsletter passes a test of quality, which will no doubt reflect your own excellent business standards.
Be sure that all of your links work, you haven't (gasp!) misspelled anything, your content is free of faulty line breaks, and you've tested the end product in multiple email clients.
Here is a little checklist to help you with quality control before each mailing:

1. Use a plain text file editor, like TextPad, to generate your lines at a set character number (experts recommend 60-65). This will help you avoid those wacky line breaks. NotePad works for this as well, but you'll have to count characters manually and do a hard return after each line.

2. If you're creating an HTML newsletter, write or paste your text into a program like TextPad or NotePad (TextEdit for Macs), so that content will render free of funky characters that were meant to be something else.

3. Always preview your newsletters in the major email clients, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and Outlook. What looks like a masterpiece in one inbox could look like gobbledy-gook in another!

4. Develop a working knowledge of how various email programs function. That way, if a customer complains about rendering, you can diagnose the problem based on their email settings.

5. Get a second and third opinion; always send your newsletter to a couple of colleagues before sending.