Generating Ideas For Your Newsletters

It’s important to keep in touch with your customers, old and new.

One of the best ways to do that is to send out a monthly newsletter.

Yes, newsletter, not sales letter.

Keeping in touch, sending them useful information and news and not making a direct pitch will help keep your name in their minds. Then, when they’re ready to buy again, they’ll think of your first.

Just remember your newsletter isn’t a regular sales pitch. Sure, if you are launching a new product or service you can add a piece about that, but your newsletter shouldn’t be all about offers and why they should buy from you.

The idea is to use it as a relationship building tool.

So where do your ideas come from?

After a while, you’ll probably find that your stream of brilliant ideas is beginning to dry up.

What was once a simple task once a month is now turning into a chore.

Every newsletter is beginning to look the same, so much so that your open and click through rates are plummeting.

What do you do?

Give up?

No. You just have to get your thinking cap on.

Generating new ideas

I write a regular newsletter for one of my clients.

It’s done on a bi-monthly basis and I usually contact him with an idea for the lead story and then we work together to add in the rest of the information, such as offers etc.

So where do I get my ideas from?

My first stop is his website and blog. What have they been talking about? Once I find a suitable topic I do a bit more research to expand it and make it directly relevant to his audience.

What if there are no ideas?

Then I get on the phone and we have a chat about what’s been happening in the business over the past month. You’d be amazed how many content ideas that can generate.

You see, your newsletter themes don’t have to be about what’s happening right now in your business, they can be about wider issues. Perhaps a customer asked you a question? If they were interested in that topic perhaps other customers are too.

Look at what’s happening in your industry – new technologies that can be commented on, news stories that you can elaborate on, or events.

There are ideas everywhere; you just have to know where to look.

Read around. Listen to your customers. Talk to other staff members. All of these will generate ideas for future newsletters.