E-newsletter content strategy

By Mark Brownlow | Post to del.icio.us

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Previous topic: Content strategy, length and frequency
Next topic: Length

Content strategy is the approach you take to presenting your newsletter content. Say, for example, you had an article on choosing tires for winter, and wanted to give this information to your newsletter readers. There are three basic approaches to doing this. You can:

You can apply these three alternatives to just about any kind of content, not just articles. So we can say the choice is:

There are some newsletters where the summary or headline accompanying a link is deliberately kept vague or incomplete, so that the reader is forced to visit a link just to find out what the topic is in the first place.

The obvious advantage of this is the additional web traffic it brings.

But remember that this is all about giving your newsletter long-term impact and influence. It's that relationship thing again; trust, respect etc. etc. Continually forcing a reader to visit your website just to find out if a link is worth visiting in the first place shows a lack of respect for the reader's time.

Summaries and titles need to provide enough information so a reader is in a position to judge whether they need (or want) to click on the link or not. Give them control and they will respect you for it.

Reader preferences

As always, let's begin by taking the perspective of the reader. The readers' preferences will vary from newsletter to newsletter, depending on their motivation for signing-up, the kind of information presented and other factors. There are those who want all their information presented in an email, perhaps because:

Other readers like to be able to scan a newsletter quickly and get further information from a website if they need it, perhaps because:

How do you know which kind of reader dominates your audience? Well, you can ask the readers directly or interpret their preferences based on what you already know of them.

For example, are your readers likely to want to print and pass around your newsletter? What kind of Internet connections do they have? Not everyone has flat-fee Internet access, and many - even in the most industrialized regions - pay additional (telephone) charges for going online to follow links.

Your objectives

All things being equal, what are the pros and cons of the different content strategies in terms of their effect on your objectives? Here the choice is usually between sending all the information in the mail, or inviting people back to the website.

Providing full information is best suited to those newsletters where the focus is on branding or building a long-term relationship. It works well in combination with the no-promotion approach outlined earlier.

It suggests to the reader that you have no ulterior sales motive (even if you do!). You're saying, "here is some valuable content. We expect nothing in return, not even a click through to our website." So it builds trust, credibility, respect, recognition, and other factors that contribute to long-term success.

Equally, though, if this means the content is too long, this approach may overburden the reader with information, showing a lack of respect for their time (see the discussion on Length below).

Presenting information in short chunks and encouraging people to visit the website for more detail is best suited to newsletters with more of a promotional focus. You may want readers to take some action, or perhaps your newsletter is simply part of your website promotion strategy and designed to bring people back to your site.

You're also respecting the wishes of those readers who prefer to scan contents quickly and control the depth of information they receive. If they want more information, they'll click though to your site.

As always, though, there's a flipside. Some readers don't want to have to go online or visit a website to get the full information.

Summary (with apologies to Abraham Lincoln): You may please all the people some of the time; you can even please some of the people all the time; but you can't please all of the people all the time.

Type and volume of information

The kind and amount of content you're presenting also influences your content strategy. The longer and more complex the information, the less suited it is to presentation in full in the newsletter.

A long article or interview, with various references to other web pages, is better suited to the information plus link approach. A short article can more easily be accommodated in full in a newsletter.

If you have a lot of different bits of information to present, you may also prefer to use more links to the website. Nearly all "news" newsletters take this approach. With dozens of reports, stories or news items to inform their readers about, they simply include summaries or headlines, with links to more information.

Ease/cost of production

Since the content strategy has an impact on newsletter length, you might also consider the delivery cost issue. The full information approach usually means a longer newsletter, which costs more (in fees or bandwidth) to send. Even free services often have upper limits on the size of mail you can distribute.

If your content is posted online anyway, for example as part of your website content, it may be easier to simply post a title and link than reformat the entire material for a newsletter.

Alternative approaches

Careful consideration of the above criteria helps you decide on the right approach for you and your readers. In many cases you'll find that readers value your content equally, regardless of which content strategy you use.

There's also no reason why the different content strategies need be mutually exclusive. And there are ways of presenting content which combine the benefits of the different strategies without the potential disadvantages. Here are a few examples...

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