A few months ago, I wrote a post offering a few suggestions for your newsletter template. Even if you are sure your template is awesome, you might have dismal open rates. People have different ideas about what a “good” open rate is. I had a client at one point who was perfectly satisfied with an open rate that was consistently around 15%. The average for my clients is around 30%. I’ve talked to business owners who have open rates above 90%.

Most people worry  more about how many addresses make up their lists than about how many people actually read their newsletters. It is better to have a list of 20 people with an 80% open rate than a list of 1000 people with a 10% open rate. You are far more likely to find that email marketing works for you if you begin with a smaller list of people who really want to hear from you, than you are if you

image courtesy of The Marmot via flickr.

begin with a list of hundreds who might have heard of you.

If you do it right, your list will grow. People will open, read, and, most importantly, respond to your newsletter. It’s the getting-it-right part that is hard. A few tips to help you keep your carefully-crafted newsletter out of the trash:

You use it like a sales circular. I subscribe to a newsletter from a local pet supply store. Every single week, they send out an email to advertise A BIG WEEKEND SALE!!! Things like 10% off all gerbil food do not excite me. After two or three weeks, I stopped opening it.

It’s okay to use your newsletter to let people know if you are offering a special or a discount, but don’t make that the only thing your newsletter does. It’s boring – especially when your “sales” are only going to appeal to a tiny segment of your subscriber list. Make sure that any offer you make will have broad appeal, and that there are, at least sometimes, other reasons to open your newsletters.

It’s all about YOU. One of the biggest reasons to use email marketing is that it builds your relationships with your customers. It gives them a small window into your company’s culture, or even a chance to know more about you personally. People are easily bored, though. Relationships require balance. When every issue is about you, but you never address your readers’ needs, values, or priorities, they are going to quit opening.

The key to avoiding this mistake is to make sure you are writing with your ideal customer in mind. Write as if you are having a conversation with that person. There’s nothing wrong with letting your customers get to know you – just make sure you are  keeping them in mind.

It’s the same thing, again and again. There have been so many times I’ve subscribed to newsletters and been delighted with the first 4 or 5 issues that hit my inbox. Then, after a couple of months, less delighted. Then, bored. If every issue is an interesting personal anecdote, followed by a customer testimonial, with a great coupon only for newsletter subscribers at the bottom, people are going to get bored.

When you find a combination that works, it’s tempting to stick with it. What you need, though, are four or five or six combinations that work. Keep surprising your subscribers and you will keep them interested. Send a link to a news article related to what you do, then a personal story, then a product offering, then a link to a video about your company. Try keeping a log of ideas, so that you always have something to turn to when it’s time to write the next issue, and so that you have a place to keep up with “extra” content for the future.

You need a proofreader. Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve re-read this post approximately 50 times and found a mistake every time. Feel free to point out those I miss in the comments – because I’m sure I will miss some. However, when your newsletter is so riddled with misspellings and poor grammar that it makes my head hurt and my pulse race, I’m going to stop torturing myself by reading it.

There are people, ahem, who will proofread your stuff for a small fee. If you lack confidence in your writing skills, paying someone to proofread or edit your newsletter is well worth the money. No matter how laid-back your customers are, you can bet there is at least one grammar nut on your subscriber list. You can sell her stuff, too, if she is not so annoyed with you she fails to see what you are selling.

You are overwhelming. Smarter people than I have done studies that show you can send email to your list daily and not suffer a significant drop in subscribers. If you send me stuff daily, or even every-other-daily, I’m going to unsubscribe. First I’m going to delete everything you send me without ever looking at it for a couple of weeks, then I’m going to unsubscribe.

There are a few types of newsletters that can get by with daily sends, but not many. You have to gauge the tolerance of your subscribers for yourself. Sometimes weekly works perfectly, sometimes bi-weekly, and for some businesses, sending randomly works best. You can do some testing, and you can even ask your subscribers their preference.

There’s nothing personal. I love Mini Coopers. I used to own one and hope to own another some day. When I learned that Mini had a newsletter, I was excited, but the excitement faded within a couple of issues. There was just nothing in them that I could relate to. Once, there was a link to a blog written by someone who was testing an electric mini, and that was interesting, but that was the only thing that got my attention in ONE YEAR of receiving the newsletter.

The scope was just too big. Mini has an international audience, and their newsletter attempts to appeal to lots of different kinds of people. It rarely has anything in it about the cars, or about the people who drive them. It is clearly written by a large marketing department for a large audience. Mini would be better served by email marketing by making their newsletters more relatable. If you are running a small business, embrace the fact that email marketing is personal.

There are plenty of other reasons newsletters fail. Do you have an email pet peeve? What is one of the worst mistakes you have encountered in your inbox?

Your email newsletter design is similar to your business card design. You need it to grab attention, deliver information and make the person looking at it want to know more. While I am a writer, not a designer, I have looked at hundreds of email newsletter templates, and I’ve seen some really bad ones. Here are a few reasons your email newsletter template sucks:

1. It’s ginormous. If all I see on the screen when I open your newsletter is the name of your company in five-inch-tall bold lettering, I’m annoyed. I have no idea if I want to even make the effort to move my finger and scroll down. Usually, I just hit delete. Sorry.

If I do go to the trouble of scrolling, and your font is so big that I have to keep scrolling and keep scrolling to read your content, I’m going to be annoyed. Annoyed prospects are less likely to buy from you. I know how to adjust the size of the text on my screen, so you really don’t have to make the text of your newsletter huge.

2. The colors are painful. Just because you can make the background orange and the text blue, doesn’t mean you should. In fact, when you do those kinds of things, your newsletter appears unprofessional. Color is fun. Fonts are fun. But they are also dangerous.

If you want orange in your newsletter, try using it in a border. If you want to use a “fun” font, use it in a title. Otherwise, you risk making your message harder to read, and people are busy. They are not going to put in any extra effort to read something that makes their heads hurt.

There are people who will help you design a template for future use, and their services are often reasonably priced. Get in touch. I’ll be happy to help you come up with something functional that won’t cause your prospects pain.

3. Your images are weird. If you don’t know how to manipulate images so that they don’t appear flattened or stretched when you put them in your newsletter, you might want to consider leaving them out. The best thing to do is invest a little time in learning how to make them work. Most email distribution services have great tutorials and help sections on their sites, and quite a few have really good customer services reps who will help you by phone.

4. Columns. Or lack of columns. Personally, I like two columns, but personal preference varies. Some folks don’t like columns at all, and that is fine, though a table of contents or a “what’s in this issue” section is nice. However you decide to go, make sure it’s easy to navigate your newsletter and that it’s easy to see whatever you want recipients to see.

Do you want people to click through to your site? Then make sure the link is obvious. Want people to “like” your page on Facebook? Then don’t bury a link to your page at the bottom of your newsletter. When you have too much “filler,” you end up with clutter, and then people don’t even see your wonderful offer or your excellent article.

There are lots of reasons to market by email. There are not many excuses for sending out horrible newsletters. Before you even begin putting together a template, you should think about your reasons for sending a newsletter at all. What do you want to accomplish? How can your template help you achieve that goal?

Of course, all of this ranting could just be evidence of my steadily increasing crotchetiness. Do you find horrible email design an assault to your inbox? Maybe other people love seeing all the bright colors and nifty fonts. Please, chime in. I’m curious if this bugs other people, too.

Early in my copywriting-for-money career, I had a client who was a dentist. He was (and still is) a great guy – friendly, funny, good at his job and always paid on time. He wasn’t particularly comfortable with technology, which was a big reason he hired me. In many respects, he was my ideal

image courtesy of bptakoma via flickr.com

client.

Like many medical professionals, his staff guarded him closely. I couldn’t call his office and get through to him, and he never responded to emails. At first I figured that I could generate ideas for his blog and Facebook page by doing adequate research. I quickly realized that more would be necessary in order to do a good job.

I needed to know what kinds of questions his patients asked him regularly, what products he recommended most frequently, what he saw as wrong with his industry, and his thoughts about trends and fads. Any time I found a link to an article related to dentistry, I found that I wanted his opinion before posting it.

He also used a company that provided a suite of services to dental offices, and that included a public relations packet each month. Their packet had a blog post, a press release, a letter to patients, and promotion suggestions and materials. My client said that he basically wanted me to make sure all that information was being used and that I wouldn’t need to actually write much at all.

The problem was, most of that material was rubbish. The blog post, the press release and the letter to patients were all basically the same.  In August, the materials were about making sure kids’ teeth are healthy before going back to school. In October, the dangers of sugar were addressed. The American Dental Association has a theme for each month and these PR materials followed those themes – just like every other dentist does.

For the first few months, I tried augmenting the existing materials, but quickly found I really needed the doctor’s input. His opinions and thoughts and ideas would have infused my work and made the marketing effort much more effective. I tried every way I could think of to get a line of communication open. Email, voice messages, messages left with his staff, messages for him left with his wife (she owned an art gallery and was also a client), all went unreturned.

Finally, I realized that he wanted the whole process to be automated. He wanted to write checks and have it all taken care of. It took months for me to admit that it just wasn’t going to work. He was a great guy – besides not wanting to lose his business, I didn’t want to let him down. But that is exactly what happened.

As time went on, I felt increasingly frustrated by the whole situation, and so pushed it to the back burner. Posts, newsletters and press releases went out a few days later each month. I dreaded doing research for him, and avoided calling his office because I felt so annoyed that my messages didn’t seem to be getting through.

Now I know that all of this could have been – should have been – avoided before I ever agreed to take him as a client. Now, I ask prospective clients if they are willing to talk with me on the phone weekly for a few minutes, or if I can attend monthly staff meetings. I cannot ghost write for a person if I don’t know what they think. I cannot help with branding and  marketing without knowing a little something about the day to day operations of an office or a company.

While the whole experience was no fun, I’m glad that it happened. I learned a lot about what is required from a client in order for what I do to work well. It would be nice to be able to say, “I can take all your marketing headaches away, and all you have to do is write me a check each month,” but now I know that will never work. It would be easy to write the dentist off as a “bad client” but, really, at least part of the blame lies at my doorstep.

Did you make a pivotal mistake early on that saved you heartache later in your career? Have you ever taken on a client only to learn later that you should have passed for one reason or another? Sometimes sharing eases the embarrassment. A little.

Does the number of connections your company has on Facebook make a difference to your bottom line? Do more followers on Twitter translate to more money in your bank account?

Image by Martina Rathgens via Twitter

To some degree the answer is, of course it matters. If people don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you or spread the word about how fabulous you are. When I attended a live interview with Guy Kawasaki via Skype, he said, “There are two kinds of people on Twitter. The ones who say they want more followers and liars.” My clients ask me all the time “How can I get more Facebook fans?” In some ways, yes, size matters.

How you interact with people matters more, because if your interactions are in line with your goals and strategy, your numbers will grow – or not, depending on what you are trying to do.

On July 26, on Entrepreneur.com there was an article titled “Five Lies About Social Media Marketing,” which has 136 comments as of now. The debate in those comments is lively, and a few days later, July 29, a rebuttal appeared, titled “Five Truths About Social Media Marketing.” The same five points are covered in both articles.

The point that both articles seem to miss is that everything depends on a multitude of factors, with the biggest one being what, exactly, you are trying to accomplish by making social media a part of your marketing plan in the first place.

What is it that you want from people when they connect with you? Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to tell their friends about you? Are you simply trying to gain or retain their loyalty? What is your goal?

These are critical questions that you should answer before you ever try to increase your numbers of friends, connections or followers, and the answers to them will inform your marketing strategy. If you sell luxury items, scarcity may well be part of you marketing strategy. Exclusivity can be a powerful selling tool. However, if you sell $3 widgets and make a $1 profit on each one, you probably want to reach as many people as possible.

For just about any approach you can think of there is somebody out there using it successfully. Pretty much everything you read about social media talks about engagement. Then there are people like Seth Godin who, famously, does not engage. He does not allow comments on his blog, does not respond to comments on his Facebook page and doesn’t do much of anything at all with Twitter. Yet his books are best sellers.

Regardless of the approach that works best, one thing remains important: content. The information you provide, the tone of your communication, the status updates are all the ways your customers gauge whether or not they want to do business with you. Your content tells your story so make sure it fits into your strategy.

Have you found that increasing the number of social media connections you have makes a difference? Do you have a strategy for using any of the marketing tools you use? Do you find the tone of your content matters? 

Are you taking care of the basics? The stuff you know you should be doing, and that only rookies or arrogant suckers fail to do?

image courtesy of Nrico via flickr, click image to see his profile

If you aren’t, you are going to see a slow slide, followed by a painful THUMP. Then you are faced with the daunting task of climbing right back up.

I can tell you because I’m there. Rubbing my business bum and wondering how in the world I let this happen.

For months, I had a comfortable client list. Each of my clients was pleasant and the work was challenging, but not stressful. A few referral jobs here and there filled in any gaps in my schedule, and I had plenty of time for lunches with friends and working out and all sorts of other good things. So I left “marketing” on my to-do list week after week, and didn’t think too much about it. Yes, I’m hanging my head in shame. Such a common mistake! Who hasn’t read (or written!) a post about the importance of marketing even when things are going great?

Of course, even with the greatest client list on the planet, you are going to have some attrition. Things change, people move, businesses close and life generally happens. And such was the case for me – all at once, of course, because of some law written by some guy named Murphy.  Now, I’m scrambling with no one to blame but myself.

It was easy to let marketing go for several reasons. I didn’t really want to be too busy through the summer. I wanted to make sure my existing clients were well-served and happy. I wanted to see if it would be possible to work by referral only.

Excuses. Lame excuses.

If you are running a business that involves attracting customers (and what business doesn’t?) you have to keep on marketing. If your business is big and successful your marketing activities might take the form of networking, maintaining your brand, or simply responding to emails. For the rest of us, marketing is probably a much longer list of activities.

Over the weekend, I wrote a new plan. This one includes a heavy dose of daily marketing – but also a few “built-in” ways to market so that later, when my roster is full again, it will be easier to stay in the marketing habit.

It is difficult to publicly admit to such a silly mistake, but really, everyone messes up. Make me feel better: share your common business errors. Have you let your accounting go for too long? Stopped marketing and paid the price? Failed to respond to an inquiry? Surely I’m not the only one feeling the sting of embarrassment!