Building a better newsletter

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on June 20, 2007

I saw an ad for the Volkswagon Golf the other day. It went along the lines of "the car that outlived them all."

So it is with the humble email newsletter. Not as cool as podcasts, not as hot as RSS feeds. But reliable as a Golf when it comes to building loyalty, awareness and relationships.

But only good newsletters do the job. And the latest resource on how to make your e-newsletter one of the good ones comes from Nick Usborne in the form of his 17-page "The 6 Elements of a content-rich, money-making e-newsletter" report ($8.95 download fee).

Nick's report describes how building expectations, consistently meeting expectations and engaging readers is the key to long-term success. And the first five of his six elements cover crucial parts of that process.

The sixth element then addresses monetisation, which talks more about key approaches than specific ideas.

In the mad rush to generate sales, the basic principles underpinning a winning newsletter tend to get forgotten, even by those of us with wide experience of newsletter publishing.

So Nick's report is a useful reminder and checklist for building the context and framework in which day-to-day newsletter production needs to operate if it's going to work for both you and your subscribers.

It helps us get away from obsessing with granular design elements and deliverability issues to understand how we build a newsletter that people actually want to receive.

Worth reading in combination with the Keeping the Key report, which is a longer, but less easy read.

More on newsletters | Tags: email newsletters, nick usborne, email marketing

[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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