Tuesday, December 11, 2012 came and went. What a great day! It marked the first day of Social Dragon Marketing’s newsletter. Having a newsletter…not just any newsletter…but a newsletter that reflected my brand accurately was important. Not only do I want my audience to have great information but I also wanted it to look pleasing to the eye.
For those who may be interested in starting or revamping their newsletter, I share five things I learned while creating Social Dragon Marketing’s newsletter.
1. You don’t have to do it alone – After looking at templates over and over and not making a decision, I finally decided to hire someone. Okay, it’s not that I couldn’t make a decision; it’s that I didn’t want to make a decision. I just didn’t have the time.
I sent five newsletter templates I liked and one template I did not like to Cheryl. What took me six months and no newsletter to show for my efforts, it took Cheryl an hour and a half to come up with a newsletter template I loved. Now all I had to do was create the content.
2. The Right template – With all the email/newsletter marketing services available (e.g., MailChimp, Constant Contact, AWeber) it’s easy to pick a template that can be tweaked to suit your brand’s marketing message.
3. Content matters – Not only does the newsletter need to be pleasing to the eye, but the content needs to ALWAYS have value to it.
4. Have a plan – You cannot create a newsletter without a plan. You can try but it will not work. You need to plan the content you are going to create for each newsletter and the day your newsletter will go live. You want to try to be consistent. For example, publish your newsletter the first Monday of each month at 9:00am. Try to stay away from sending out your newsletter the first day of the month. A lot of newsletters are sent that day and it’s easy to get lost in an inbox full of unopened newsletters.
5. Perfection isn’t necessary – Yes, we want our work to be good. To be better than good! We want our work to be the best! Sometimes perfection isn’t always achievable. My newsletter had a few spacing issues because of the template. These issues were very minor. I was happy and proud of my first newsletter so the send button was pressed even though it wasn’t 100% perfect.
If you provide quality content that is relevant to your audience and/or relevant to your industry, no one will notice the tiny imperfections.
If you have a newsletter what have you learned from creating it?
