If you regularly publish a newsletter, the way that you write your newsletter is critical. Someone who picks up your monthly customer newsletter should be able to get the key points in any of your articles just by scanning.

Use simple subheads to highlight key points. If you have more than one key point in your text, you can use more than one subhead.  Use boldface to call attention to important words and phrases. Notice how your eye naturally is drawn to the boldfaced word in this paragraph. You want to stop a scanner dead in their tracks.

Because if a scanner scanning the newsletter doesn’t stop and read the articles, it’s not likely they’re going to get a lot out of it. The whole idea is you want them to read the newsletter.

There are also devices you can use to increase readability. Charts often make concepts clear. Bulleted lists are great for summarizing key points and make newsletters crisp, clear, and easy to read. I use all of these techniques when I design my Success Advantage No Hassle ‘done-for-you’ Newsletters.

The Secret to Selecting Typefaces

Headlines and body copy are the way that text is presented to the reader. You want your design to be both professional looking and readable. Start by fully understanding the following important terms.

A typeface is a style of type. This line is in a typeface called Times New Roman.

There are two basic kinds of typefaces that you’ll see in great newsletters.

1) There are “serif faces,” like Times New Roman. A “serif” is the little curl or footing on the letters. A book face is a typeface with both serifs and shading. Times New Roman is a book face.

2) There are also “sans-serif” typefaces. That means that there are no serifs on the letters. Arial, the typeface being used in this sentence, is a sans-serif typeface.

A font is the rendition of a letter or word in a typeface. This is Times New Roman 10-point font. Point is the size of the type. This is Times New Roman 10-point Bold.

Right now you’re probably thinking, “What does that have to do with me and my newsletter?” But this is important, so stay with me.

Pick up a major newspaper and look at it. You’ll notice that the newspapers all use similar typefaces. They use sans-serif typefaces for headlines. They use book faces for body copy. You should too. Sans-serif typefaces are good for headlines. The eye finds it easy to stop at the end of a line. Book faces are good for body copy. They encourage the eye to keep moving.

Read more about design techniques and strategies, and get some easy to use newsletter checklists in my book, The Magic of Newsletter Marketing – the Secret to More Profits and Customers for Life! It is available at Amazon.com or my Web site, www.TheNewsletterGuru.com.

Remember, newsletter writing is the most important part of great customer newsletters!

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!

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.

Based on my 28 years of experience producing great newsletters that get amazing results, I want to share five secrets with you on how to create a great company newsletter. 

Secret # 1 - Tell them what else you do. Many customers initially engage with a business by purchasing a single product or service. Over time they may do repeat business, usually reordering the same product or service, unaware of the other products or services that the company has to offer. How many times have you heard a client I didn’t know you did that,” or, “I didn’t know you also sold that”? Or, “I didn’t know you also sold that!” These are all missed opportunities to increase your revenue. 

Secret #2 - Tell them what’s new. As business owners, we are always coming up with new products and services. A newsletter is a great way to get the word out to people who already trust you and find value in what you sell. This can often be done quite effectively by way of customer success stories or testimonials. 

Secret #3 - It’s not about you. This is very important. Your newsletter is not about you or how many industry awards you have won. Your newsletter should be about what’s important and interesting to your customers and clients. Inform, educate, and entertain them, and they will look forward to your newsletter. It is also vitally important that your newsletter have the right ‘balance’ of content. Too much about your business and it will look and feel too much like a marketing piece. Learn more about the ‘proper balance’ by visiting www.successadvantage.net.

Secret #4 – Recognize the expensive real estate! The back page of your newsletter is not simply the mailing panel; it is the first thing your readers will see when the newsletter comes out of the mailbox. This is a great place to put important items that you want readers to see. 

Secret #5: – Frequency trumps everything. Frequency is more important than the size of a newsletter, whether it’s color or black and white, or even the quality of the content! Yes, you heard me right – I would actually prefer a homemade cheesy newsletter published monthly to a professionally designed newsletter done twice a year. You simply must have frequency to build trust and relationships.

To learn twelve more secrets of a great newsletter, get a copy of my book, The Magic of Newsletter Marketing – The Secret to More Profits and Customers for Life at www.SuccessAdvantagePublishing.com.

Do you struggle finding content (or finding the time to write it) for your newsletter? Does this prevent you publishing every issue on time? Has this “blank page syndrome” even prevented you from writing your first newsletter?! If you answered yes to any of these questions, I created Success Advantage just for you! Imagine every month getting 21 pages of great content that you are free to use in your newsletter! Now imagine that you also get my awesome ‘ready-to-use’ newsletter templates, my monthly coaching call, a monthly audio lesson and a don-for-you ezine! Subscribe today and let this amazing program become your Success Advantage – check it out at http://www.successadvantage.net