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30 content ideas for an email newsletter

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:48:45 +0000

One day your boss comes into your office and announces that he wants to publish an email newsletter about your department, company or organization. And then he gives you the job of actually producing it. He gives you a deadline and says “I look forward to seeing a draft of the first edition next week.” What do you do?

I’ve created and managed a few email newsletters over the years. Just as with a blog, an email newsletter is built around content. Here are 30 content ideas for your email newsletter.

1. Links to and excerpts from your recent blog posts.

2. Links to and excerpts from other web sites or blogs that your readers might find useful or interesting.

3. A short essay or letter that’s not published anywhere else.

4. An exclusive tip of the week/month.

5. Links to your company’s social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook fan pages, etc.).

6. News and announcements about what’s going on in your business or organization.

7. Special offers, discounts and coupons.

8. If your employer is a for-profit business, links to the favorite charity encouraging people to donate and explaining why you support the group. (Like I did with this post.) If you work or a nonprofit, links to businesses that support you in a substantial way.

9. Employee profiles (to put a human face on your business or organization).

10. Customer profiles.

11. Customer testimonials.

12. Links to independent reviews of your products or services (such as on Yelp or Amazon).

13. Invitations for readers to review your products or services on your web site or an independent site.

14. Contact information (seems basic, I know, but it’s important).

15. Polls or trivia questions.

16. The results of the last poll or answers to your last trivia question.

17. Photos of your products.

18. Reader-submitted photos of your products being used.

19. A contest.

20. Listings of upcoming events (sales, meet-ups, open houses or whatever’s appropriate for your organization).

21. A tutorial or lesson. You could do a series of these.

22. A guest column by an outside writer, perhaps a well-known blogger in your industry or even a celebrity.

23. Q&A style interview with a key employee in your organization.

24. Emails from readers, answered by you “Dear Abby” style.

25. Inspiring, compelling stories of about customers of yours who are doing great things (climbing mountains, raising money for charity or maybe training for the Olympics).

26. A funny video produced by your employees.

27. Holiday greetings (during the holidays).

28. An invitation to an event or webinar exclusively for your newsletter readers.

29. New job listings. Hire your customers? Why not. If they buy from you, they could be great advocates for your brand.

30. Sneak peeks or previews of new products or services.

What else have you put in email newsletters? What would you put in a newsletter if you were doing one? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Dear email marketers – why don’t you love me anymore?

Mark Tosczak — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:15:54 +0000

Your unthinking emails could wash away my affection for you. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1089948)

Dear Email Marketers,

I have to admit, in the beginning I was really infatuated with you. You had a cool web site with lots of great content. You had obviously spent a lot of time developing it, and it seemed like you were going to be pumping out more great content in the future. All you wanted was my email address. I wasn’t sure, but then there was that special offer: the enticing free ebook, discounts, special offers just for me. So I took the plunge and signed up for your email list. What the heck, I figured, you seem legitimate, and legitimate email marketers would honor a future unsubscribe request. And if that didn’t work, I could always mark you as spam.

At first it was good. You sent me updates, new content, emails that were genuinely useful and interesting. But over time, your ardor seemed to fade. The emails got shorter, the copy less engaging and less interesting. It seemed like, more and more, all you wanted me to do was click on that link and go read a sales page, watch an over-the-top promotional video or buy something else with my 15% off coupon (which isn’t so special when you’re sending me one every week). The interesting, engaging content that had attracted me at first? It was no longer there.

And then it got worse. I started getting these really short emails – “Hey, Mark, you’ve got to check out this link.” No explanation, no detail, nothing. Too often the link led to just another sales page.

Then there was the “Whoops, I made a mistake in yesterday’s email and sent the wrong link. Here’s the right one.” Yeah, right – that’s just another come on.

Or worst of all, the “keep this a secret.” Even though I know you’re sending the same email to many other people. C’mon, we both know there’s no secret. Do you really think that old copy writing trick fools anyone?

And about those subject lines carefully crafted to look as though they come from a friend. Sometimes they start with a “RE:” at the beginning to make it seem as though you’re replying to something I sent, or they have proper nouns spelled with lowercase letters to make it seem more casual. Do people really fall for that? Listen, as soon as I saw your email address, I knew you were a marketer, not a close personal friend.

That’s not all. Sometimes you sent me these emails that had nothing but images in them. Don’t you realize my email programs automatically block those images? I couldn’t even guess what you might be sending me without hitting that download images button. I admit, I’m in a hurry and I’ve got a lot of other email to get through, so sometimes I don’t bother. The email was never read.

And those emails from the upscale office supply company whose products I love? Lately, those have seen really cluttered. Too many pictures of too many products. What are you trying to sell me? The pens, the purses, the new line of notebooks? Don’t you know that most of what I’ve bought from you, and most of what I’m interested in, are the notebooks and paper? Why are you distracting me with all those things I’m not interested in?

What’s wrong, email marketer. Don’t you care about me anymore? Why aren’t you making an effort.

What, you don’t know how? OK, then, I’ll tell you what I really want:

1. Interesting, useful content — right in your email. Sure, I’m not always going to click through to your web site, though I know that’s what you really want, but at least I’ll continue to pay attention to your emails, and maybe click through another time.

2. Offers that are actually related to my interests. You already know them, don’t you? After all, I’ve bought things from you before, and you got my email address during those transactions. Please don’t make me go hunting through your promotional emails for what I really want.

3. Honesty. Drop the “I made a mistake” and “Let’s keep it between us.” I know you’re trying to sell me something (which I’m OK with, if it’s a quality product that I’m interested in). But I hate the deceptive writing intended to somehow manipulate me into doing what you want.

4. Regular emails, but not too frequent. I’m busy, I get a lot of email, and sending me something everyday is just too much unless you’re providing great content.

5. Uniqueness. When you send me the same thing every time, the same discount or coupon, it just looks like you’re not trying. And quite frankly, it’s boring. Why don’t you mix it up a bit and come up with some new ideas? That would get my attention.

I unsubscribed from some emails today — I wasn’t getting anything from them. But maybe that won’t happen to you. I want what I once got — engaging, relevant content. Maybe you’ll make some changes before it’s too late.

Sincerely,

Mark the Customer

p.s. Dear reader — What do email marketers need to do better to woo you? Leave your ideas in the comments.

Four easy tips for making your business card and email signature more social

Mark Tosczak — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:15:54 +0000

Is your business card social media savvy? (Photo by blary54 at stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1022838)

So you’re a social media maven. You tweet, you blog, you have accounts on all the major social media sites, and a few of the minor ones, too. You know how Digg works, understand URL shorteners and subscribe to a bunch of RSS feeds from social media rock stars like Chris Brogan and probloggers like Darren Rowse.

But, do your business card and email signature reflect these facts? Or are they mired in the ’90s, when a fax number was just as important as an email address?

Here are some ideas to bring these two common identity tools up to date:

1. Add the address for the social media service you use most commonly. For me, that’s Twitter (@marktzk, in case you want to follow me).

2. Instead of a company web address, how about a blog web address? This may not be feasible if you are part of a company and have a business card and email signature that follow a standard, prescribed format. But if you are self-employed, have personal business cards and use a personal email account, why not add the blog address to those?

Tip: You can get free business cards at VistaPrint and Bizcard.com.

3. You may be writing brilliant, useful content on your blog, but are you letting people know? How about adding the three most recent blog posts you’ve written under your email signature? If that seems strange or too narcissistic, it’s certainly not any worse than the quotes and song lyrics I see regularly in email sigs. Firefox add-on WiseStamp can help you do this for your free webmail (i.e. Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) accounts.

4. Are you promoting a free offer on your blog to get people to sign up for your email newsletter? For instance, perhaps your offering a free report or PDF when people join your email list. Consider putting this on the back of your business card or, again, in your email signature. (While we’re at it — is this information included in your major social media profiles? Some people who review these profiles will probbly be interested in your email list.)

I’m sure there are other things you could do with your business card and email signature to make them more social. What are your ideas? Please share them in the comments below.

Six links on social media, content marketing and online public relations

Mark Tosczak — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:24:10 +0000

I’ve found several interesting blog posts, articles and other links in the last few days and thought I’d clear them out with a blog post.

Guy Kawasaki has a good, but somewhat controversial post, about “How to use Twitter as a twool.”
If you have a blog or other content site, and you’re using an email newsletter as part of your outreach, Problogger Darren Rowse has some great ideas about how to use your email newsletter and an autoresponder to drive even more traffic to your web site.
Think social media is just for big brands with big budgets or dot-come type companies? Think again. A pest control company has adopted social media strategies as a significant, long-term component to its marketing.
The New York Times asks if new data mining technologies will track us across the Internet and through our mobile communications and ultimately erode our privacy. Might notions about privacy be redefined for the next generation?
Amazon tries “user-generated public relations.” Is this really new, or just old-school PR techniques applied online?
ReadWriteWeb says we should stop using TinyURL on microblogging services such as Twitter. I agree – I’m using snipr.com.

Eight tips to fine-tune your online life

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:00:50 +0000

Here are a few tips that I’ve found useful for living online.

Get more out of your web surfing

Use delicious or a similar utility for your bookmarks. Then you have them available to you at any computer – with the power of tagging.
Use delicious to tag what you intend to do with a bookmark – to_read, to_blog, etc. Also use delicious tags to record what you did with a bookmark. I tag blog posts of others that I’ve commented on with icommented.

Email like a pro

Most email programs (even the one on my BlackBerry) have a spell-checker that you can set to automatically run before the email is sent. Make sure that option is activated. It prevents you from forgetting to spell-check a message and making a mistake that makes you look dumb, or at least unprofessional.
Entering email addresses in the To:, CC: and BCC: fields should be the last thing you do when composing an email. Write it, review it, revise it. Entering email addresses last ensures you don’t accidentally send off a half-written email.
If you don’t need a reply, say so in the message. If you can get your message across clearly in the subject line, do so, and add for “end of message” to the subject line.

Be a better online publisher

If you’re going to write anything about sex, politics, religion, personal relationships, using illegal drugs or drinking heavily on any web site – your blog, Facebook, whatever – think twice. Then think a third time. I’m not saying not to post it, just consider it carefully. Current and future employers, customers, investors and others may see it. You have the right to say whatever you want, but you also can’t escape the repercussions of doing so.
If you publish a blog, subscribe to your own feeds, via both RSS and email. This allows you to get the same experience many of your readers will, and when the experience isn’t very good you, you’ll know it. Then you can fix it.
Also, if you publish a blog make sure you have your comment options set so that when you get a new comment on your blog, you get an email about the comment. In my early days of blogging I failed to do it and discovered only after several days that enormous amounts of comment spam were being published on my blog.
Buy your own domain name, as in “JoeSixpack.com.” If you don’t, someone else might, and you might not like what they do. Heck, it’ll only run you $10 or $15 a year, depending on what registrar you use.

What are your top tips for making life online a little easier? Please let us know in the comments.

Is email the new blogging?

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:00:53 +0000

Is email the new blogging?

I’m serious. For all the hype about email being dead, the vast majority of people online are still using email, using it as much or more than ever, and will continue to use it. Which brings me to my question: Is email the new blogging?

Three examples

When Jason Calacanis announced he was dropping his blog and instead starting an email list, many people just took it as yet another publicity stunt by the entrepreneur and online showman. But I think Jason’s move to an email list might be symptomatic of a renewed focus on the power of email. So far, his emails have been substantive and interesting, and worth reading.
Power blogger Darren Rowse, publisher of ProBlogger.com (which I highly recommend), relaunched his email newsletter recently. He’s not giving up his blog, but the newsletter (which I also recommend) has additional content in it beyond the blog.
Peter Shankman started his “Help a Reporter Out” emails on Facebook, migrated it to its own web site and seems to be swiftly turning it into a business, all in just a few months. The email is designed to connect reporters to sources. Both reporters and sources (or, in my case, the public relations pros who represent potential sources) can sign up and receive the email for free. And I think HARO could turn into a real competitor to ProfNet’s paid service, which does pretty much the same thing. This week HARO crossed the 15,000-member mark.

Why email?

Are people are beginning to see some value in email as an online publishing tool that blogs can’t provide.

For example, with email you have a way of counting and contacting your readers — you have their email addresses.

With email, you only have to worry about getting people to sign up and stay subscribed. No search engine optimization, no linking strategies, minimal design. Sure, you have to think about getting past spam filters, but if people want to receive your email usually that’s not a big problem.

With email you don’t have to moderate comments or “create community.” Though you can create community. Gary Vaynerchuk, host of the vlog Wine Library TV, cultivates an army of 80,000 “Vayniacs” in large part by spending 12 hours a day on email. (I can’t find this online, but it’s in the August issue of Wired magazine, on page 112, as a sidebar to the cover story on Julia Allison, which I’ll be blogging about later this week.)

With email, when people opt-in to read it, they’re giving you permission to communicate to them about what you want to — to sell yourself, your products, your services, your ideas. Is that more powerful than the often-passive readership on a blog? I don’t know.

Blogs aren’t dying, but …

This doesn’t mean blogs are dying. But I have a feeling we’re going to see more and more email newsletters, from bloggers and others, and a renewed emphasis on turning email into a really produtive content channel. Although you can subscribe to my blog via email (the little form is there on the right-hand side of the page), I’m not about to start an email newsletter. For now, at least, a blog works for me. But I bet we’re going to see more people launching email newsletters.

What do you think? Are we going to see more of these email publishing ventures? Are there other examples of this I’ve missed? Or am I making too much out of a handful of isolated anecdotes? Tell me what you think in the comments.