Newsletters are important for businesses, but it can be hard to produce a constant flow of great ideas. Depending on how often you put together a newsletter and how much content you put into it, the process can take a lot of time. In fact, some business owners forgo the newsletter idea because they believe they don’t have enough time to put together something that would be extremely valuable to their clients. So, we’ve taken some time to put together this incredibly easy method to help you get a handle on your newsletter ideas so that you can produce the best possible deliverable for your subscribers.
Remember That Not All Subscribers Are Clients
It’s important to keep in mind that not everyone who subscribes to your newsletter is a current client, but all current clients should have an email address in your system and should receive your newsletter (unless they’ve asked you to remove them). This is important because your newsletter ideas should include content that would appeal to both clients and potential clients.
Now, let’s get onto that easy method!
Review Previous Newsletter Content
If you use a program like Constant Contact or MailChimp, you should have a way to review which articles are getting the most click-throughs, which email subject lines get opened more often, and various other important metrics. Review this content (and the content of well performing newsletters) on a quarterly basis to find what works. Model future content, headlines, and email subjects from your best performing work.
Next, look at your best performing content that is considered evergreen. When content is evergreen, it means that it pretty much stays the same. If there are changes, they don’t happen very often. Evergreen content is something you can use in different ways. It can be used to generate more ideas or you can rework the piece to address different target markets. For instance, Clients ARM works with a wide variety of businesses including lawyers and healthcare providers. We could take a piece of evergreen content about customer service and rewrite it to appeal to each audience. Of course, we wouldn’t want to put both of those pieces into the same newsletter.
Have a Blog? Share Your Best Content in Your Newsletter
Another thing you can do to simplify your newsletter idea creation is to share your best content in your newsletter. Of course, newsletter content is usually shorter than blog content. So, you might cut down your best blog post into its main points and include a link to the blog post so that your newsletter subscribers can read the entire piece.
Watch Google Trends
Google Trends is a Google tool that shares the most recent search trends with anyone who wants to know this information. And it’s free. You can focus on current events that relate to your industry, business news, and just about anything else that you can think of that your subscribers might be interested in. You can use Google Trends for a worldview, country view, or even for a specific state.
Include and “Insider” Bonus
Make sure that there’s at least a little something that is given only to people who subscribe to your newsletter. It could be a coupon. It could be a tip. It could be a free e-guide. Just make sure that it has real value for your audience.
Make Your Newsletter Easy to Share
Finally, make it easy for your subscribers to share the newsletter with their friends or family through Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Make sure that they also have the option to forward the entire newsletter via email. Also, you should include a call to action that encourages sharing. It can be as easy and reminding your readers that sharing is caring and encouraging them to pass on the information if they find it helpful.
Create More Time to Work on Your Newsletter
If you’d like more time to work on your newsletter, check out Clients ARM’s valuable services. With more than 30 years of experience, we help businesses of any size with their accounts receivable, collections, billing, trust management, client intake, customer service, and more. Clients ARM takes advantage of technology to make life easy for our clients. This means we’re able to keep your costs down while you get the help you need by taking over tasks that are taking up your time. If you’d like to learn how you can have more time to focus on your business needs, schedule your free consultation.
