E-Mail Newsletter
April 12, 2020
| Volume 1, Number 1
Staying in Touch with Customers
“Make sure you don’t lose the
customers you’ve spent so Often businesses spend as much time and effort gathering new customers as
much energy to acquire.” they do on anything else. It’s also one of the costliest functions of doing
business. So, it’s important to make sure you don’t lose the customers you’ve
spent so much energy to acquire. The alternative is to continue with the time-
consuming process of finding new customers from an ever-shrinking pool of
prospects. And since it costs much less to keep existing customers instead of
Keep These Things constantly replacing them, it just makes good business sense to do what it takes
For A Newsletter to keep them coming back.
Regular communication with your customers lets them know how much you
01. Use Big Headlines value them and their business. Show them that you care by offering valuable
information such as tips on how to use your products and services more
effectively, event announcements, information on upcoming new products and
expanded services, and special discounts on existing ones.
02. Make your articles short and
to the point. E-mail newsletters—quick, easy
Using an e-mail newsletter can be an effective, low-cost method for staying in
touch with your customers. It helps reduce churn and can easily generate more
business from customers you’ve already spent a great deal of effort to win.
03. All information should be of
Since there are no mailing and printing costs involved, it’s also very gentle to
value to the customer
your bottom-line. Another benefit is the almost instantaneous delivery that e-
mail affords. You don’t have to worry whether the Post Office will get the
newsletter to your customers in time for them to take advantage of a special
offer.
Microsoft Office Word makes it simple to create and send e-mail newsletters.
Customers will appreciate the regular communication and you could be rewarded
with more business from your existing customer base.
“Make sure you don’t lose the Create a customized template
customers you’ve spent so
Add your company logo, change the colors to reflect
much energy to acquire.”
the ones your business uses, put in your business
address, phone numbers, and Web site address—in
other words, develop a basic template reflecting your
company’s look that will stay the same for each issue.
“It’s a good idea to use Web Layout view (on the View menu, click
Web Layout) when creating your newsletter. That’s the look your
customers will be seeing when they receive your e-mail.”
“When choosing the fonts that you’ll be using for headlines and body text, a good rule is to never use
Here’s an easy way to use Fonts
text you've already
formatted as the basis for When choosing the fonts that you’ll be using for headlines and body text, a good
a new paragraph, rule is to never use more than 2-3 fonts in a newsletter. More cause confusion
character, or list style: and make your efforts look less professional. Be creative with the ones you do
choose, though. Use different sizes and colors, and use bold and italics to add
variety without confusing the look of the newsletter. You can add these custom
1. Select the text, on the
styles to your template’s style palette so that they’re instantly available.
Format menu, click Styles
and Formatting, and then Finally, delete any features that you won’t be using. Once you’re done with these
click New Style. You’ll see all general changes, save the result as a Word template.
your style characteristics
displayed. Add articles and graphics
One distinct difference between a printed newsletter and an e-mail version is the
2. Name your new style, check
amount of text to include. Unless you know that all your readers will be
the Add to Template box,
interested in a longer version, you should keep the amount of information to
and then click OK.
about 1,000 words or less. Anything more becomes tiresome to read online, and
you may lose their interest before they read the items you really want them to
see.
What to include
Some items to think about including might be introductions to new employees,
recent awards presented to your company, specials and discounts on products or
services, announcements of new products, and information on new ways to take
advantage of your products or services. Don’t include items that might be of
interest to only a few customers; you want to capture and hold the interest of as
many readers as possible.
Add graphics
Add graphics or pictures with captions to help break
up the text and create some visual interest. But make
sure that whatever you add relates to the adjacent
text. A picture of the company dog might be cute, but
if the story surrounding it is about a new product, the
COMPANY ADDRESS picture will only serve to confuse your readers.
Street Address: Contact information
Address 2: Be sure to include contact information in more than one place. Not only should it
be part of your master template, you should include “For more information…”
Phone: contacts in every article where it’s appropriate.
Fax: Proofread
E-mail: When you’ve completed your newsletter, it’s time for one of the most important
steps of all—proofreading. Take several passes through the material, looking for
different things each time.
