Professionalism, value and personality

By Mark Brownlow | Post to del.icio.us

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I've said the three critical reasons why newsletters don't achieve impact and influence are essentially lack of confidence or trust, lack of interest or value, and a lack of connectedness or loyalty. If we flip that idea on its head, then we can clearly see how this influence and impact might be improved. In doing so, we're defining the three crucial elements of a successful newsletter:

Professionalism tackles the problem of a lack of trust or confidence. Value tackles the problem of a lack of interest or (obviously) value. Personality tackles the problem of a lack of connectedness or loyalty.

Now, that all sounds rather neat - it makes a pretty pie chart and is easily expressed on an overhead projector, should I ever venture back into the world of consulting. But let's not get trapped in boxes here. All three elements, combined, tackle all three of the problems I identified above:

A professional, valuable, personable publication builds the kind of trust, credibility and loyalty you need to gain, retain, influence and impact readers and customers.

I invite you now to reflect on your favorite newsletters for a few moments. Chances are they're done well, provide good value and come from (or are strongly associated with) a person, not a department, right?

Incidentally, I used the word "gain" deliberately in that bold sentence. If you think back to the idea of influence and impact discussed above, you'll see how this kind of newsletter also attracts new subscribers.

Ever subscribed to something because of a friend's recommendation? Enthusiastic subscribers are like an unpaid sales team, promoting your publication and its contents to their friends and colleagues.

Enthusiasts also provide genuine testimonials which are helpful in encouraging doubters to sign-up for your newsletter. And if you give your current readers value, you can demonstrate this in archives and promotional material. You can give people the evidence they need to subscribe to your publication.

This kind of newsletter also goes some way to addressing those allegedly unavoidable problems of dead addresses, changing interests, and bounces. A good newsletter, with impact and influence, gives its readers an incentive to stay subscribed.

This means that these readers will take the time and trouble to update their subscription details. And it means when the newsletter doesn't arrive (for whatever technical reason) they will try and ensure they do get their copy.

Now, I said above that it's the combination of professionalism, value and personality that matters. This is because the three elements do not each make an equal contribution to the enthusiasm, influence and impact that we're trying to achieve.

Professionalism provides a foundation for building trust, value and connectedness, but does not in itself generate much in the way of enthusiasm, influence and impact.

Value builds on this foundation to further reinforce the relationship with the reader and makes a greater direct contribution to our end objective.

Personality builds on professionalism and value, and is the final (and perhaps most important) key to generating enthusiasm, influence and impact.

So while it's possible to build a successful newsletter on the back of just one or two of these elements, the optimum result comes from the combination of all three. Personality without value or value without professionalism, for example, does not work nearly as well as all three together.

In the next chapters, I'm going to examine these three elements more closely, beginning with professionalism. But before that, I want you to take on board three concepts which will help you get the most out of the remainder of this report.

First, I want you to consider email newsletters from the reader's perspective. You know how newsletters can work for you, your business or your website. But you need to consider how to make newsletters work for your readers too.

The vast majority of the advice you'll read about email publishing, and particularly email marketing, takes the commercial publisher's or marketer's perspective. You'll find a lot of articles and advice columns focusing on deriving and analyzing metrics, delivery technologies, newsletter promotion and much, much more.

These topics are all important, of course. There is the danger, however, that we forget about the reader. Your newsletter is an irrelevancy if nobody's reading or if nobody cares. To be successful, a newsletter must meet the needs of both reader and publisher.

I regularly see newsletters which forget this.

They forget they have to earn and build influence and impact. They assume readers are as interested in the publisher's business, website, or opinions as the publisher themselves (believe me, this is rarely the case). They forget it takes work to make a relationship work. They focus completely on taking, and forget you have to give.

So carry this thought with you as you read the rest of this report - it's not just about me, the publisher, it's about the reader too.

Second, in caring about your reader, don't make the same mistake in reverse and neglect your own objectives. As someone once said, "if you give customers what they want, they want products that do everything and are free".

So carry this thought, too; it's not just about the reader, it's also about me. It's about achieving a balance between reader and publisher interests, about creating that old cliché of a win-win situation.

Third, this report is not going to provide you with a template with which to (re)build your newsletter.

My aim is to get you to think about your newsletter(s) and understand the complexities and issues involved in the elements that contribute to influence and impact. Armed with that knowledge, and various practical tips you'll also find here, you'll be able to go away and improve your own publication.

But when you come to interpret the information I give you, do this in the context of your own situation, objectives and audience. Know your objectives, know your readers and pass everything you learn through that filter.

So take this third thought with you, too - no single book or article can tell me how to write my newsletter for my subscribers. This report can take you a long way along the journey to a successful newsletter, but you'll have to take the final steps yourself. Enjoy the trip!

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