Remember the ol’ 80/20 Rule that says 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers? Well since this is true for most companies, I find it odd that many entrepreneurs focus on and spend the majority of their marketing time and resources always trying to acquire new customers, much of the time to the neglect of their current customers (the ones generating the profit!).

That makes no sense. It’s much easier and quicker to sell more to your current customers than it is to acquire and sell to new ones. Look, you already have established relationships with your current customers because they’ve already purchased from you! This is a huge marketing advantage.

Communicating with your current customers with a monthly newsletter helps you stay top-of-mind. Your newsletter arrives and instantly your customers are thinking about you and after receiving your newsletter on a consistent basis, your customers actually begin to look forward to receiving it—it’s a welcomed friend—and they are curious to see what tips you are sharing with them this issue. Issue after issue, your newsletter reinforces your relationship with your customers. It makes your fence stronger. It also gives you a way to tell current customers about products and services you provide that they may not know about.

Learn more about newsletter design in my book, The Magic of Newsletter Marketing – The Secret to More Profits and Customers for Life available at Amazon and my Web site.

If you’d like to discover the best ‘Done-for-You’ newsletter program ever, check out my No Hassle Newsletter program. With No Hassle Newsletters you can complete your monthly newsletter in about 23 minutes or less! Go to www.nohasslenewsletters.com.

Publishing a customer newsletter is one of the smartest ways to grow a business. Yet, few give real thought as to the importance of newsletter design. Newsletter writing is critically important yet without proper design, your newsletter may not get read! In this article I’m going to discuss the largest and perhaps most important part of design.

The masthead is the major graphic element at the top of the front page of the newsletter and includes the newsletter title. The masthead should identify your company. It may say that you (your company name) “presents” the newsletter title. It may include your logo or a symbol that represents your kind of business. A spine is a good symbol for a chiropractor. A professional speaker might be represented by a microphone.

In most cases, the newsletter title you develop should not be the name of the company. It should, however, be a name that sticks in the mind, that rolls pleasantly from the tongue, and, along with your graphic of choice, easily conveys what the newsletter is about.

The tagline is at the bottom of the masthead. You can think of it as a subtitle. The newsletter title and the tagline should work together. They should tell anyone who picks up your newsletter what it’s about. It should give them a clue about the benefits of reading your newsletter. One last point. Remember the old expression, “too cute by a half.” What you think is cute and ‘clever’ may leave your readers utterly confused. Learn more about newsletter design in my book, The Magic of Newsletter Marketing – The Secret to More Profits and Customers for Life available at Amazon and my Web site.

If you’d like to discover the best ‘Done-for-You’ newsletter program ever, check out my No Hassle Newsletter program. With No Hassle Newsletters you can complete your monthly newsletter in about 23 minutes or less! Go to www.nohasslenewsletters.com.

Publishing a newsletter is one of the smartest marketing strategies any company can use to build long-term, profitable customer relationships. But there is a secret to newsletter writing that helps to actually getting your newsletter read.

The fact is, you’re the expert on your business and what you do. Tell your customers about new developments. Introduce them to new products or services. Give tips for using existing products or services. Think of new uses for those products or services. Offer them articles that help them learn.

Short, helpful articles about services you offer are the kind of pieces that generate pass-along referrals. Pass-along value makes your newsletter a great way for your current customers to refer you to their friends and colleagues.

If you run a house cleaning service, you know that your customers do some cleaning when you’re not there. Your newsletter should share cleaning tips your customers can use. That way your value goes beyond the cleaning you actually do. The chiropractor can do a short piece on back pain. The accountant can share Five Things Every Business Plan Should Have.

Readers love leadership-management tips. They love to read articles on saving money; in winter, for example, you might include the tips section Five Things You Can Do to Save Money on Your Heating Bill. Readers find such tips informative, helpful, and enjoyable.

Customers love stories. Don’t just describe what you do. There are certain times when you’re writing articles in your newsletter where you can be selling. After all, newsletters are sales letters in disguise. But there’s a way to do that so that it reads like a success story. Demonstrate your benefits for your customers by telling them a story about someone like them who succeeded because they purchased your product or service.

Here’s what I mean. Instead of describing a product or service, paint a story that illustrates the benefits of the product or service. Instead of using the headline XYZ Insurance Company Announces New Coverage, say New Line of Coverage Saves Small Manufacturer $23,000 in Insurance Premiums. This is a much more effective headline. It grabs the readers’ attention. It allows you to share one of your success stories and gets readers thinking, “I wonder if this coverage would work for me?”

What you’re doing is you’re providing information. It’s all about good information. But you’re doing it in a way that’s going to cause people to think, “Hmm, I could benefit from that.”

This is an extremely effective way to make your newsletter more interesting while still meeting your ultimate goal of generating more profits for your business.

I opened this post by stating that publishing a company newsletter is one of the smartest marketing strategies any company can use. But the secret to writing newsletters that actually get read is writing from your customer’s point of view. Your newsletter must contain what I often refer to fun, entertaining, and informative content. You can learn more about this by visiting www.NoHassleNewsletters.com.