If your business sends out a monthly newsletter, you must tell the readers what’s in it for them. And you must do it immediately.
Everyone has self-interest. People are bombarded with thousands of advertisements daily.
The Style of Your Newsletter
First, It Must Be Short.
These days people get so many emails that most are not even opened. If they can’t read your newsletter in 30 seconds, or a minute at the most, they won’t read it.
Moreover, they will not read your future newsletters and probably unsubscribe.
This is the problem with a lot of real estate newsletters. There is so much information in them that nobody reads them.
Second, it Must Look Right for Today’s Reading Habits.
People read on their phones, and to a lesser extent on their computers.
Therefore, there must plenty of white space on the screen.
Your newsletters should not have properly developed paragraphs. Use one or two sentence paragraphs or three at most.
Third, The First Letter of Each Word in Titles Must Be Capitalized
This is a rule of copywriting that has been around forever.
Fourth, Proper Color Combinations
If you’re using any colors other than black type and white background, make sure your title is in an easy to read color combinations.
Eg. Yellow font, black background, white font, black background, etc.
The Headline
The Headline is the most important part of your newsletter.
Your headline/title should have the “what’s in it for them.”
Or stated another way, what the article will do for them.
Lots of headlines make the mistake of putting something outrageous in the headline. i.e. “clickbait.” Stay away from this and just tell the reader what their benefit is.
What’s a benefit?
A benefit is how the reader will feel after getting your product or service. For example, the benefit of an umbrella is you stay dry.
Benefits are not “features.” Features are the specs. Eg. This umbrella is made of sturdy high-grade linen.
In monthly newsletters, your readers’ benefit is that they will make more money.
The Body of Your Newsletter
In keeping with the sentiment that your newsletter must be short, you should have only five or six sentences.
The first sentence should flow from the headline.
It should continue with the benefit to the reader. Specifically, “you” or “your” should be somewhere in the first sentence.
Don’t including some fact that nobody cares about in the first sentence.
We’ve all made this mistake by starting off saying, “it’s a troubling time in the legal profession,….. Don’t do this, nobody cares.
The second sentence is where you put an interesting fact.
You’re trying to make the reader continue reading. For example, a fact such as 300 Billion emails are sent per day would go in the second sentence.
The third sentence is where you put your “features.” Again, these are the specs of yoru service or product.
Call To Action
Basically what you want people to do. It may sound patronizing, but you must tell people what you want them to do.
Normally you want people to call your office, go to your website, blog, or landing page.
Resources
I’ve been writing newsletters for 10 years for my law firm. I send them out to about 500 people every month. On average, I’ll get one new client every time I send a newsletter.
My favorite marketing and copywriting books are.
John Caples‘ Tested Advertising Methods (5th Edition) (Prentice Hall Business Classics)
Gary C. Halbert’s The Boron Letters
Drew Eric Whitman’s CA$HVERTISING: How to Use More than 100 Secrets of Ad-Agency Psychology to Make Big Money Selling Anything to Anyone
and the copywriting bible – David Ogilvy’s Ogilvy on Advertising
If you would like more information about our newsletter service, please contact us at:
derronw@msn.com