Cleaning up your newsletter

Email is a wonderful way to keep in contact with your customers. Many businesses send out weekly or monthly emails to their customers to keep them in the loop with company events. If you are sending newsletters to your customers, you will need to focus on cleaning it up a bit to actually spark their attention and to motivate them to do something about the email. Here are some easy tips to help you clean up your newsletter:

Tip # 1 - Start with your brand
Can your customers easily identify the email as your company? What are you offering in the email that shows customers your brand message? Your brand will have a specific promise that you need to uphold in order to continue strengthening your relationship with your customers. Proper branding includes your logo and other contact information. As long as customers can easily identify your company and they know how to get in touch with you, you will have a stronger email newsletter to send out.

Tip # 2 - Is it inviting?
The other part of a good newsletter is not only the information it contains, but it's design. Newsletters that do not flow well and look cluttered are hard to read. They aren't attractive nor are they inviting to the customers and this means the email will be sent to their junk box or it will be deleted. A good newsletter is inviting and it makes you want to read it.Here are some tips to help make your newsletter a little more inviting:

• Consistency. Use colors that are similar to your website, print materials, and your company colors. Having consistency with your newsletter makes it easier to identify and to read.


• Break it up. A newsletter that is formatted with text only is not inviting. You need to try and include some photos and other graphics in there. This will make the newsletter more appealing to your customers and it provides a good balance in between text. Headers help to break up the newsletter as well, making it much easier for your customers to find what they need in a hurry.


• Keep it simple. When you start adding in multiple fonts and other things, it will be hard to read. Stick to one or two fonts as it's much easier for your clients to read.


• Make it engaging. The headers and short paragraphs you include need to be informative and include action words that will inspire customers to click on the link and head back to your website to learn more. Think of adding a short story to the newsletter. Include the best parts of the story so your customers will have a desire to click on the link to finish reading the rest of the story.

Tip # 3 - Engaging Content
The content you include in the newsletter must be fresh and engaging. Your customers are looking for information that is new, not recycled or old. The message you want to convey will come through the content you are posting. In order to have fresh content for your customers, here are a few things you need to address:

• Customer surveys - your customers need to provide you with feedback so you can figure out if you actually are satisfying their needs. Create a list of things that you need to address and then ask your customers in the newsletter as this will motivate them to provide you with information to make your business better.


• Industry - pay attention to your industry as you can post articles and information as to how it relates to your company.