You may genuinely want to educate people on your product or service (and that is a great way to do it). Yet, the prime motivation for that is to get your target audience to do something.

Whether it’s buying more mutual funds, making a charitable contribution, or renewing a membership, there’s always an objective beyond putting out information. Your story selection should never lose sight of that fact.

For example, Company Y puts a blurb in their client e-newsletter about their employee Bob Jones celebrating his 40th anniversary with the firm. It’s a nice human interest piece and makes a small statement about Bob’s loyalty and the quality of Company Y. Yet it really does nothing for the customer other than make them say “wow, that’s a long time,” or “when is Bob going to retire?”

Now, if Bob Jones’ department adds a new server that’s going to help Company Y process orders 10 times faster than the competition, that gets people’s attention. Especially if you are a potential client or a former client who may have stopped using Company Y because of slow service.

Make sense?

The Fix:
When creating a story list for your e-newsletter, take a step back and try to imagine what your customers want to read. What’s bothering them, making their day-to-day business life more difficult?

If you come up with a blank, ask one or two of them with whom you have a relationship. Most customers, when asked in a casual, non-confrontational manner, will tell you what’s on their mind and then some. From there, you have a good start to developing a story list. And if the stories in your publication make your customer’s life easier, solve a problem, save money, or make money for them, they will read your e-newsletter. Promise.

Addendum:

Giving your readers what they want is only part of it. You must give them the next step or call-to-action as well—even if that seems fairly obvious. So, if they read your article, enjoy it enough to want to receive more similar articles, you have to tell them how to do that: click on the attached link to sign up for future newsletters or our special report. You can even make a case that every article you include in your newsletter must ask for some type of action.

This blog was originally in Nobody Reads Your e-Newsletter…And How To Fix It.

Sadly, we’ve become a society of readers with ADD. There are just so many demands for your readers’ attention that if you are lucky to get their attention, you don’t want to jeopardize it by overloading them. In other words, if you create an e-newsletter where they have to scroll, they will roll.

The Fix:
Try to keep the length of your e-newsletter to 300-400 words if it’s one article. If you have more you’d like to say, you can always add a link to your website with more in-depth coverage.

If you want to have more articles in your e-newsletter, list the headlines of each article and then have a one or two-sentence description of the article underneath with a link to a more in-depth article on your website. Just like your subject lines, your article headlines will have to be attention-grabbing to get them to click.

This tactic offers another advantage in that most e-newsletter programs have reporting functions so you know who is clicking on what. This lets you know which prospects might be interested in what your company offers and gives you some intelligence so you can do some follow-up.

This was taken from Nobody Reads Your e-Newsletter…And How To Fix It.

Addendum:
When the last edition of this came out, size of an article certainly mattered. With the increased popularity of mobile devices, readers aren’t as averse to scrolling. You still should not overload them with text. For longer articles, draft a paragraph or two and then provide a link to the entire article.

Perhaps not the best choice of words, but it made you want to read more, right? Your subject lines need to grab your target audience in the same way your headlines for print ads do. Your prospects and customers receive an awful lot of e-mail and if your subject line doesn’t make a case for opening the e-mail you’re sunk.

Poor subject lines fall into two camps. In one, the subject line tries to be catchy or trendy and ends up having nothing to do with the actual content of the e-newsletter. On the other side, you have the subject line that sits on the page like a manhole cover, doing nothing to entice the reader to click and find out the rest of the story (forgive me, Paul Harvey).

As crude as the above headline might be, you knew what this section was about and the angle. It certainly catches your eye more than a title of “Why subject lines are ineffective.” You may choose different verbiage for your publication, but make your subject line catchy and specific to the story subject.

The Fix:
To write better subject lines, you really need to focus on the benefit of the story to the reader. If you write a story on a new company offering, the subject line should not read, “Company Y introduces new widget.” It should be more like “New widget improves production speeds by 10%”. Make it about what’s in it for your readers and not what your company just did and you are halfway there.

If you do not have somebody on your staff with the skill to hit that high note, then hire a copywriter. There are plenty of freelancers out there ready, willing, and able to craft an e-newsletter with subject lines that leap off the page. And for a reasonable price, too.

This blog was taken from “Nobody Reads Your e-Newsletter…And How To Fix It.”.

Addendum:
In 2017, the battle for attention in the in-box rages on. If you want them to open, you have to grab their attention in the subject line.