All The News That's Fit To Print (Or To Sell Your Products)

If you have any kind of direct to consumer business, chances are good that many of your customers wouldn't mind hearing from you from time to time. The caveat of course is that what you say must be interesting or useful to them.

If all you do is send out sales notices or make attempts to get customers to buy more from you, they will be turned off and stop paying attention. They may even stop being your customers. The irony, proven by Google and countless others, is that giving away useful stuff for free can be highly profitable.

What can you write about?

As a rule, all people are tuned into a station called WIIFM - "What's in it for me?" Whatever you write about in your newsletter must address this reality. It should be informative, interesting or entertaining.

Winning some kind of award or honor may feel great to you but unless there is something in it for them, most of your customers really won't care all that much. However if you can find a way to make it about them - for instance as a way to show improved quality, or as a lead-in to the fact that you're going to hold a celebration sale - customers will happily rejoice with you.

Articles with unique or clever ideas for ways to use your products are always good. For instance, Kraft sends out a newsletter with cheese recipes. GEICO's newsletter highlights great road trip destinations. A local plant nursery might send out articles about seasonal tree care.

Think of topics that don't sell your products directly but which get readers in the mood to buy the very kinds of products you sell. If they like and trust you enough to subscribe to your newsletter, chances are they're already more likely to buy from you than from one of your competitors.

How often should you send out your newsletter?

The short answer is, as often as you have something useful or interesting to say. As long as it's on a predictable schedule. Typical intervals are weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and quarterly. They key is to watch your unsubscribe rate.

Each time you send out a new issue, 0.1% or fewer of the recipients should unsubscribe from receiving future issues. If the rate climbs above that threshold, either send content less often or work to make it more interesting or useful.

Maintaining your mailing list

There are a number of online mailing houses which will help you maintain your mailing list as well as provide a host of related services. The three largest mail houses are:

• AWeber
• Constant Contact
• Mail Chimp

Of course there are other services out there but these are reputable companies that can handle even the most complex mailing needs.

Ways to make money from your newsletters

Once you have a mailing list up and running, there are a number of ways of profiting from it without offending your customers.

To start with, customers realize that you are a business. They expect that you are in business to make a profit. Readers will not object to your doing so, as long as there is some payoff for them. So you can write articles such as those from Kraft which highlight your company's products and encourage readers to buy them. Of course you could make one of Kraft's recipes using another brand of cheese, but enough readers will use Kraft cheese to make it very profitable for them.

Another way to profit from your newsletters is to openly advertise between the "useful" articles, just like ads in a magazine. You can even sell ad space to other companies. As long as you are not giving the names or contact information for your readers to those companies, you are not violating any kind of privacy agreements. The key is that the ads you display should be properly targeted and relevant to your readers.

Don't overlook direct competitors as a potential source for ads. Most businesses shy away from this but there are smart ways of going about it and it could prove to be profitable for both companies.

Jeff Kontur is a freelance copywriter and marketer specializing in helping small businesses promote themselves effectively online. Electronic and eReader copies of his book "Fat-Free Marketing" are available for FREE from his web site http://www.FatFreeMarketingGroup.com.