I’ve often been asked, “Is it wise to send the same newsletter to different customer groups?” For instance, perhaps you own a business that has both retail and wholesale customers. My answer: more than likely it’s not a good idea, and I’ll tell you why, but have no fear. Sending two newsletters is not as difficult as you may think. 

If you have two or more different customer groups (here we’ll use our example of a business that has both retail and wholesale customers), obviously you’re going to write a separate personal monthly message, because if you’re talking with wholesale customers you’re generally talking a different language. Wholesalers have a different language than retailers. You might use certain jargon or buzzwords. Any special offer, obviously, will need to be tailored two different ways.

And of course, if you’re going to do a customer profile, you’ll want to write about one of your wholesale customers in the newsletter that goes out to your wholesale customers, and you will profile a retail customer in the newsletter that goes out to your retail customers. If you do otherwise, people will be confused about what you’re doing. (Remember, know your customer and gear the newsletter toward him or her.)

Here’s how to make this fairly easy on yourself. You don’t need to customize each entire newsletter. The only place you really have to customize is the article on the front, which is usually your work stuff, and your article on the back page, which is usually your personal monthly message. Your other content as well as your contact information will probably remain the same. If you want your customer newsletter to arrive to you about 90% ready to go every month, then check out my wildly popular No Hassle ‘Done-for-You’ newsletter templates and content program, Success Advantage 2.0!

This afternoon I visited a close friend in the hospital who just found out he has cancer. It’s very sad. Having heard the same news eight years ago myself, I’m reminded yet again that life as we know it can change in an instant and also how very precious life is.

I can’t remember a time with so much turmoil and uncertainty in the world, yet hearing news like that gets you real clear, real fast, about what’s really important. The ‘to do’ list, sales projections, marketing plans, and every other thing that was of burning importance this morning, suddenly doesn’t seem so important anymore.

The only thing that is really important is people and relationships. People matter, things don’t. As I said, there is a lot of turmoil and uncertainty in the world, but I don’t think anyone of us needs to look very far to see just how fortunate and blessed we are. Before you go to sleep tonight, give thanks for the many blessings in your life, and please say a prayer for my friend Eric.

The most important part of marketing, something that every entrepreneur and business owner must master, is the art of capturing the attention of our customers and prospects. The reason should be obvious. If you fail to grab their attention – stop them dead in their tracks, your message, copy, and even your compelling offer is wasted, meaningless. Sounds brutal, right? Well it’s true; the best sales message in the world is useless if it doesn’t get read.

Another very effective marketing strategy is to engage your customers and prospects by ‘entering the conversation’ already going on in their mind. This conversation can be about anything, but often it is centered on some current event, holiday, or perhaps a big news story. Very often, some of the events captivate our society, and therefore provide a perfect way to ‘connect yourself’ to the event by marketing to your customers using attention grabbing headlines and special offers that are based on the event.

In most cases ‘enter the conversation’ marketing opportunities don’t last long and there are few marketing tools available to effectively use these two marketing strategies. That is exactly why I was so excited when I got the idea to combine the best parts of a customer newsletter with a large color postcard, and launch Newsletter Postcards!

Why are Newsletter Postcards the perfect marketing tool? For starters, Newsletter Postcards look like a newsletter and people like newsletters! Newsletters are seen as a ‘welcome guest’ and not an ‘annoying pest’. My exclusive Newsletter Postcard online order system is interactive and incredibly quick and easy to use. From “login” to “send order,” will take less than 23 minutes!

There is Literally Nothing Like it!

Plus, the best part is that you can become a ‘lifetime member’ of Newsletter Postcards for a one-time investment of only $197.00! That’s right, for a one-time enrollment fee of only $197; you will have a Lifetime Membership in the Newsletter Postcard membership program. We even print and mail your Newsletter Postcard for you!

Finally, the First Quick & Easy Way to Write, Design, and Mail a Large Color Postcard that Truly Gets Results – All in Less Than 23 Minutes!

To learn more about this hot new marketing tool visit http://www.newsletterpostcards.com.

Clean writing is writing that doesn’t call attention to itself. Clean writing is free of grammatical and spelling errors. Here are some tips on how to write clean copy.

Write more than one draft. Even professional writers do this. Next, sleep on it, then when you come back to a piece, it’s easier to spot errors and rough phrases. It’s easier to see how to improve your work.

Use your spell check, but don’t make this your only spelling and grammar check. Spell-check programs are great, and you can even use them to improve your writing over time. But they can miss important things. Spell checking programs are excellent at finding words that are spelled incorrectly. But they can’t tell if a correctly spelled word is the word you meant or if it’s the right word for the situation.

Here’s an example of how that can get you into trouble. It comes from the humor column of a denominational magazine. The writer intended to say that people with specific business talents could “use those in the service of the church.” Alas, two letters were transposed. The spell-check didn’t catch the error because the transposition still spelled a valid word. Instead, the line that went out in a letter to thousands and later caused quite a chuckle was that those people could “sue those in the service of the church.”

Here’s a tip for Microsoft Word users. There’s a feature built into the grammar checking function that can help you improve your writing. Select the option that gives you readability statistics when you check spelling and grammar. Then every spell-check will give you two helpful statistics. 1) The Flesch Reading Ease Score gives you a measure of how easy your piece is to read. You want to make this number as high as possible. 2) The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level measures readability in a different way. It computes the lowest grade level that can read your piece and easily understand it. You want to get this below 10 and usually above 6 for newsletter copy.

Fortunately, one of the best ways to judge the quality and readability of your writing is also one of the easiest.

Read your writing out loud. Don’t read it on your monitor. Print it out and then read it. Even better, have someone else read your piece out loud to you. Reading aloud calls attention to every rough spot and unnatural phrasing. You’ll instantly discover that the way you talk out loud is not necessarily how you write, and your copy will swiftly improve. I suggest doing this for everything you write.

Get someone to edit and proofread your articles. When we look at our own writing, we usually see what we intended to write. We’re likely to skip over phrasing problems and not spot errors in word usage, spelling, and typos. There’s an expression in the information marketing world: “Good is good enough, get it out there.” I believe that. I don’t necessarily strive for perfection. I strive for doing the best job I can.

To be honest with you, I use an outside proofing company. I can send them anything. I can send them PDFs, Word documents, whatever. For a very, very reasonable fee, two English majors read over it then send it back with their comments and suggestions. It’s very cheap. I think it’s either $9 or $11 for a page, which is 500 words, very cheap. One of the hardest things in the world is to proofread your own stuff.