Publishing a monthly customer newsletter can be a great source of new revenue for your business, if you know the secret!

One of the great things about a monthly customer newsletter is its ability to generate new business from old customers. That’s right. I said NEW business from OLD customers.  

In my dealings with clients and prospects, I’ve never been questioned on my assertion that newsletters are a great tool for generating repeat and referral business. After all, top-of-mind awareness is a huge reason to invest in a monthly newsletter. When your customers are ready to make another purchase, or refer a business to a friend, your company’s name will be the first thing they think of. That alone makes it worth the investment in a newsletter. 

The added bonus of producing a monthly customer newsletter is this: it tells your customers and clients what else you do, and what else you sell. 

It is my belief that many customers initially engage with a business by purchasing a single product or service. Over time they may repurchase the same product or service and be happy doing so. The customers are happy, and the business is happy thinking it is making good use of its customer relationships.  

This is a shortsighted view, however, and here’s why. Happy customers are usually  quite willing to purchase other products and services from your company, if they know what those products and services are! 

How many times have you heard a customer or client say, “I didn’t know you did that,” or, “I didn’t know you also sold that”? These are all missed opportunities to increase your revenue and your profits. Use your monthly newsletter to tell your customers and clients “what else” you carry, what else they might be interested in. Feature a different product or service in each issue. Write about it in a conversational tone, highlight some of the benefits, and be sure to share success stories and bolster the case with customer testimonials. 

Close the deal by making the product available as part of a special offer. Once you begin using this strategy, you will be amazed at what a powerful sales tool your customer newsletter is.  

If writing and publishing a newsletter seems like a daunting experience, then check out my wildly popular ‘Done-for-You’ newsletter program called Success Advantage. It is truly a No Hassle Newsletter!

To learn more secrets about writing and publishing a newsletter, get a copy of my book, The Magic of Newsletter Marketing, the Secret to More Profits and Customers for Life by clicking here.

This is another one of those times when I am going to muse, to wax poetic, to pontificate, to spout some words of wisdom that aren’t necessarily connected to the newsletter business. Wait – before you hit your back browser button and escape to another blog or Web site, give me two minutes and I think you’ll be glad you did.

I want to tell you about a decision I made about six months ago. I decided it was time to get some help running my growing businesses. This is not an easy decision for most entrepreneurs to make. After all, nobody can do anything as good as us, right?!  

Aside from being perfectionists, many entrepreneurs struggle with not having control. I used to spend time reading and learning how to do something so I could do it myself, maintain control, keep my expenses low, and stay lean and mean. The biggest problem with this thinking is that it takes so much longer to get things done. Even if it’s not harmful to your business, it certainly stunts your growth. 

Well, six months ago, on the recommendation of a friend, I finally made the decision to “let go” of some my responsibilities and hire a virtual assistant. I have to tell you, it was a decision that I wish I’d made long ago. 

With a large part of my growth coming from online activities, I hired the services of the best online marketing guru I could find, Adam Hommey. Adam is nationally known as The Website Surgeon (www.thewebsitesurgeon.com). Adam is skilled in many areas, including telling me when I am wrong or off base in my thinking. Do not underestimate how valuable that is.  

I started out by having Adam redo parts of my Web site, and now he has full rein over my entire online presence – after only six months. When I wanted to start a blog, I called up Adam and said, I want a Blog! A few weeks later, Adam contacted me, led me online to my Blog, told me how to post, and the rest is history. Adam is now setting up my e-zine and reconfiguring my multiple Web sites.  

The major benefit of this is that I now have time to focus on the larger-picture items that are moving my businesses forward. Could I learn how to do what Adam does? Perhaps – but not as well and not as fast. And I would never have the time to focus on starting my third company, No Hassle Marketing.   

Ask yourself these questions. What is holding you back? What are you spending a great deal of time on? What has been on your to-do list for too long? I urge you to consider letting go, finding some help, and getting back to running and growing your business. Have a wonderful weekend.

In my business of creating and designing customer newsletters, I spend a great deal of time writing. Like most things, doing it a lot tends to make you better. As I have mentioned at least a few times in this blog, I read TONS of books. Reading also makes you a better writer.  

As a blogger, I visit and read a lot of blogs and one of the things I notice is that many focus on what to do. In this entry I want to focus on some of the things that you should avoid as you produce a customer newsletter for your business. By the way, I think I will list some of the blogs that I visit in a future posting, so keep coming back. 

Here are Four Critical Mistakes You MUST Avoid! 

1. Not providing contact information — It’s hard to believe, but I have seen this too many times! If you’re going to take the time to create a great marketing tool such as a customer newsletter, don’t forget to tell your readers how to contact you!

2. Forgetting it’s not about you — There is always a big temptation when you start writing your newsletter to write about what is in your mind or what’s important in your world. WRONG! If your customers are going to read and enjoy your newsletter, and therefore read it again and again, it must contain information and content that is important to them.

3. Not enough pictures — One of the quickest ways to get your newsletter NOT READ is to load it up with tons of text and no pictures. I often joke with my clients about my patented (just kidding) rule of thumb for readability. Here it is: if people look at your newsletter and quickly determine that it can be read in ten minutes or less, chances are it will probably get read — otherwise it won’t. It will likely go into the pile of things that someone intends to read but probably never will.

4. Lack of distinctive personality — For heaven’s sake, don’t be boring! People get enough boring marketing messages thrown at them every day. Give your newsletter some personality. Make your readers feel a part of something fun and unique. Trust me on this; your readers will look forward to every newsletter if they learn something, are entertained, and crack a smile!

To learn twelve more Critical Mistakes That You MUST Avoid, get a copy of my new book, Newsletter Secrets Revealed, How to Increase Your Profits with a Customer Newsletter, at www.newslettersecretsrevealed.com. You can download a copy for only $4.77!

If you’re already producing a monthly customer newsletter, keep up the great job. If you’re thinking about starting one for your business, wait no longer – it will prove to be the best decision you’ve ever made!  

Here’s why: Newsletters are cheap, they provide valuable information, and they keep your name in front of your customers, prospects, and former customers.  

Why am I such a stickler about sending your newsletter on a monthly basis? Because testing has shown that newsletters lose their impact when they arrive with less frequency. Essentially, when you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. And while you’re out of mind, your customers are being bombarded with marketing messages from competitors. 

Let’s look at how practical and profitable it is to mail your customers a monthly newsletter. Assume that your cost to design, print, and mail a monthly customer newsletter is $0.89 including postage, or about $10 per year. If you think that is unrealistic, either you’re a new reader of this blog or you have not visited www.nohasslenewsletters.com! 

In his book Automatic Marketing, author Benjamin Hart writes about the awesome power of a monthly newsletter and gives a great “dollars and cents” illustration of how important newsletters are to your business. He breaks it down as follows.  

If the profit on your average sale to a customer is $100, you would have to make only one sale every 10 years to that customer to break even on your newsletter. But what if the profit on your average sale is $300 or even $l,000? If you’re a lawyer, a plastic surgeon, or a CPA, or you sell office supplies or printing to businesses, your profit per sale could easily be thousands of dollars. Maybe you run a restaurant, a dry cleaner, or a hair salon, and your profit per sale is only $20. But if you can get your customer to come in once a month, that’s $240 in profit per year from that customer—all for a marketing cost of only $10.

Can you see why sending a monthly newsletter to your customers, prospects, and former customers is like having an ATM machine with an unlimited source of cash that you can withdraw any time?