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Thousands of businesses and organizations across the country use newsletters as marketing and communication tools to complement their external marketing efforts and strengthen their internal communications. In the past decade, they have become part of a strategy that supports or reinforces a total program and lends continuity to it. The role of a newsletter in your marketing plan depends on your purpose and the nature of your audience.
Before a reader even opens a newsletter, it gives them an impression of your organization. Make sure you spend some time and money putting together a well-designed newsletter. Do this by defining your audience and objectives but, most important, ask the question: "What do we want to happen as a result of publishing a newsletter?" The answer to that question shapes the content, choice of paper, type style and size—everything. An excellent resource to guide you through this assessment stage is Editing Your Newsletter, written by Mark Beach and published by Writers Digest Books.
To decide whether to produce your newsletter in-house, assess your capabilities and resources and identify the gaps. Producing a newsletter in-house has its advantages. The editor knows the organization and is known by others, so he or she may have easier access to information. But if you don't have someone in-house with the skills to write and design a newsletter, hire freelance or outside consultants. Using untrained staff to produce a newsletter to save money means you'll lose quality.
Whether you produce an external marketing newsletter for clients or prospective clients or an internal employee communication newsletter depends on the result you're looking for. Each has different benefits.
An external marketing newsletter sells and serves its readers—and more!
A sharp image created by a sharp newsletter can lead to better market positioning and an expanded client base. That's sales!
Content that gives your readers timely and helpful information, such as new or surprising ways to use a product, makes them better-informed consumers. That's service!
The newsletter format gives authority to its content, establishing a company as an expert in its field and showcasing its understanding of clients' needs.
It may also deliver a marketing message more effectively than a brochure or direct mail campaign. Like a brochure, a newsletter's primary objective is to sell goods and services. Unlike a brochure, a newsletter uses a different sales technique. It's a soft-sell strategy that uses an informational approach rather than an advertising approach.
It can also help a business establish, develop, and maintain a relationship, create an interaction, and ask for something to happen. But it is not a product-driven message; it is an audience drive message. Once a client relationship is created through the newsletter, a business can follow up with product and service-specific brochures.
Internal newsletters create effective employee communication
While some businesses use newsletters to create enthusiasm among their clients and prospective clients, others have found they can create enthusiasm among employees by using newsletters inside the firm. An employee publication can explain policies, programs, products, and profits. It can give management a way to foster a sense of company pride and ownership by telling the employees what is expected from them—and what they can expect in return.
It can boost morale by recognizing employees for their contributions. And with a central and trustworthy message, a newsletter can untangle the office grapevine and smooth the way for changes that many companies are experiencing.
Three direct benefits a company derives from an employee publication can be better job performance, higher productivity, and a more unified work force. These are all good reasons to publish a newsletter, but there's another less obvious one. It makes planning more efficient. If management is planning an incentive program or a company picnic, they have to have the details ready to meet the newsletter's deadline. That might be six weeks ahead of time.
While much of the information in an employee newsletter could be conveyed in a memo, putting it in a newsletter is more effective. The special treatment given to information in a newsletter—typeset copy that includes a photo or artwork to illustrate the message—makes it more impressive to an employee.
Newsletters will keep making headlines in businesses across the country. Their popularity reflects the time—we have moved into the information age. But newsletters provide more than information—they also represent organizations.
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