In his book Do it Yourself Newsletters, Chuck Green describes three basic types or models of newsletters: Promotional, Relationship, Expert. Each type of newsletter shares common characteristics. Determine which model fits your business and choose a format accordingly.
Promotional Newsletters
This type of newsletter is frequently used by businesses to promote a product or service. It is also known as a marketing newsletter. A promotional or marketing newsletter is typically sent to current or prospective customers free of charge. Not strictly a sales pitch, the promotional newsletter does strive to turn prospects into customers and customers into repeat customers.
If you want to publish often and/or quickly try creating single page.
Promotional newsletters could go out in individual mailings or emails.
Relationship Newsletters
Examples of this type of newsletter are club newsletters, employee newsletters, and alumni newsletters. They focus on the shared interests, building or reinforcing a relationship. Typically distributed at no charge, and/or to paid members as a perk for paying dues.
Due to employee turnover or changing club membership, newsletter publishing duties may change hands frequently. To maintain consistency through such changes and to accommodate varying skill levels, create a basic, easy to use newsletter template that allows for easy drop in of articles and photos. A "style guide" is useful for any newsletter publisher, if the newsletter publishing duties may get passed around frequently.
Expert Newsletters
Usually subscription-based, these newsletters generally focus on a specific topic and the recipient is someone who has specifically requested the information in the newsletter and is willing to pay for the information. While you always want to put your best work into your newsletter, when people are paying for it, it's even more important to have good content and good design.
Recipients are paying for the content but will notice and be turned off by bad dedsign if it interferes with the enjoyment of the newsletter content. You have the opportunity to be creative in your layout and choice of fonts and colors but keep it consistent with the content and purpose of the newsletter.
If the newsletter is heavy on text, make liberal use of design features that aid reading including white space. Avoid large blocks of gray text.
Subscription newsletters are often longer than your typical marketing newsletters. Provide good navigation help including table of contents. If photos are important to your newsletter, choose paper and printing methods that don't detract from the photographs.
News Letters Are Not Ads
Using a newsletter as a marketing vehicle is a great tool for your businesses. However, an effective newsletter design is not just a great big ad for the business. It should include information of interest and of value to the recipient whether or not they use your services or buy your products. TONE DOWN the sales hype. In addition to the wording, avoid a newsletter design that looks like a sales flier or product list.
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Dick Morrison – Life Time Entrepreneur
For Maintaing contacts: with this “must have” helper.
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