"Writing entertaining, informative and educational newsletters to generate sales leads and maintain relationships"
IIn Mel Gibson's 1995 movie, Braveheart, at the battle of Stirling, the Scots used very long spears to defeat the English army's heavy horses, which was the first step of attack and the most powerful force of the English army.
Since the Scots, in spite of being outnumbered by the English 5 to 1, successfully routed up the heavy horses, the English army was as good as defeated on the first impact, and the rest of the battle was "mere" formality.
I mention this interesting fact because while it's pretty obvious that the very first encounter between buyers and sellers decide the sellers fate as to whether buyers regard them as respectable industrial authorities or replaceable vendors, many sellers gloriously ignore this fact, and meet buyers without considering the circumstances.
The problem is that if the buyer's first encounter with the seller is a sales pitch, then the seller is doomed. But if the first encounter is a piece of high-quality content that informs, educates, entertains buyers and gently seduce them into taking the next step towards blossoming relationships with sellers, then those sellers are really on the gravy train in terms of high-calibre clients with sexy and lucrative projects.
Yes, sellers can wait for buyers to seek out their content and digest them, but it is even better if they can serve high-quality content to buyers on a regular basis.
And this is what newsletters are all about. Newsletters allow sellers to serve content to buyers, and in doing so warm them up to the point when buyers say.. .
"We've been digesting your content. We like your approach. We like what you stand for. When we're ready to change (a.k.a. buy), rest assured, you'll be the seller we'll come to."
Granted, many IT companies have newsletters, but most of those newsletters are nothing more than either callous sales pitches masquerading as articles, cobbled-together by some salespeople or timid technical descriptions put together by technical people most of whom inherently resent sales and marketing.
And then their messages go out to potential clients. It couldn't be more idiotic.
Good newsletters have seven main purposes...
- Assess and re-assess market demand
- Creates and sustains client acquisition momentum
- Builds warm and responsive lists of self-qualified prospects
- Strengthens your brand
- Scans the horizon for promotional partners
- Tests the waters for production partners
- Creates future bonuses
The problem is that buyers soon discover that the whole newsletter ploy as a pitch parade, and they either subscribe or filter their subscriptions straight into their spam filers.
The Problem Is That...
At any one time, only 3% of your prospects are buyers on a shopping spree.
Yes, statistically only 3% of subscribers are ready, willing and able to buy what you offer to them in your newsletter.
Without a proactive "keep in touch" system, the other 97% is likely to end up in the welcoming arms of your competitors.
And in my experience, the longer before they are ready to buy you get subscribers, the better clients they will be. If a buyer contact you after the first newsletter issue that he's ready to offer you a project, that project is likely to be a project from hell.
The Reality Is That...
Newsletters must have the right blend of content and copy.
Content educates, entertains and informs readers. Copy seduces and triggers readers to take specific actions.
Copy without content is peddling. Content without copy is charity. The best choice is a healthy blend of both content and copy.
And here I deliberately use the word "blend" not balance.
This is why.
When you bake a cake, do you balance the ingredients in the four corners of the baking tray or do you blend them into a brand new entity that looks, feels tastes different from the individual ingredients?
When you balance them in the tray's corners, you can recognise every one of the ingredients - more or less even after baking. And so what? No one wants to eat it because it looks and maybe smells dodgy. You couldn't give it away in a Gulag death camp in Siberia.
But when you skilfully blend the ingredients, you get something new; something the individual ingredients don't even resemble.
And no matter how meticulous you are measuring the ingredients, if you just balance them in the four corners of the baking tray, that's all you have: Several piles of ingredients.
Balancing a newsletter means that you spend first 90% writing content, and then the last 10% writing sales copy. The problem is that the last 10% often becomes a heavy-handed sales pitch, and now the buyer regards the seller as a pathetic, pitch-puking peddler.
Blending, on the other hand, means that you seamlessly blend content and copy to optimise your newsletter's informing, educating, entertaining and selling capabilities.
Content, Copy, List and Offer
Yes, content is king, but make sure that for that king you have a throne to sit on (List) and a crown (offer) to wear. If your content is king, your list is the throne under his arse and your offer is crown on his head.
And without the throne and the crown, the king is just another jester claiming to be king. In the best case, no one believes him; in the worst case, people shower him with bad eggs and rotten tomatoes. Well, or they may even lynch him. Who knows nowadays.
But What A Waste It Is...
Based on research by MailChimp, one of the major email subscription distribution systems, the IT industry enjoys a pretty good opening rate (32.4%) and a low unsubscribe rate (0.202%), but a pretty low click through rate (2.7%).
So, while many subscribers open the newsletter, only 8.3% of readers click on the link in the call to action section of the newsletter.
And while sending out emails is free, a hell of a lot of money gets wasted on producing those newsletters. We all have heard the joke... How much sound does a fallen tree make in the forest if no one is there to hear it?
This is the same dilemma. How much impact does a newsletter make, if reader don't act upon the appropriate call to action?
The Newsletter System
In any good newsletter machine, there are three major components:
Design is the way the newsletter looks and feels when it arrives to subscribers' inboxes. It's a one-time set up.
Delivery is all about integrating the design into a template. No matter how great the design is, if this integration gets messed up, then the received newsletter can look pretty wonky. Whichever email distributor you use (e.g. Aweber, Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, etc.), you the design must be integrated into that technology.
Content is all about the materials you get published every time you send out a newsletter.
Phase One: Building The "Machine"
- What it looks like
- How it gets delivered
- What content it delivers
This phase takes 2-3 months.
Why so long? - you may ask.
Well, we have to match a few things here. We have to lay the foundations of the newsletter. Without this foundation, nothing really happens. Or, whatever happens will be very short-lived. It's like a house. You can either take time to build a concrete foundation or you can build the house on sand.
Yes, if you go for building on sand, you can move in the same day, but buy the time the foundation concrete dries in the other guy's would-be house, you have to move out in a panic and watch your house sink into the sand.
We have to invent the tone and the structure of the newsletter to make sure that it's in perfect alignment with the company's mission, vision, and long terms goals.
You also have to refine your sales funnel from free giveaways to premium offers.
Phase Two: Production
Here clients can have two options...
- Interviews: I interview you and/or some of your key people who are involved in the specific topic we write about. Then I write the content based on the conversation(s).
- Coaching: In this option, you and/or one of your key people write the first draft of the newsletter, and then I tweak it to make sure it gets read and acted upon.
So, I'm not sure if this is appropriate for your company, but if you think some external help could improve your newsletter creation and distribution, so you could grow your in-house list more effectively and position your company as the default go-to expert in your industry, then drop me a line and let's see whether or not I can help.