HOW ABOUT A COMPANY NEWSLETTER?
Newsletters are a popular way for businesses to stay in touch with their customers and prospects. It’s important to keep your audience in mind when creating and designing a company newsletter. If you only fill your pages with flag-waving about your company and it’s obvious that its sole purpose is to promote your products and services, chances are that it will make it to the circular file in short order. To make your newsletter news-worthy, you should attempt to use it to convey information that informs and educates your readers . . . with only about 10 to 20% being promotional in nature.

You can include how-to information, trouble-shooting techniques, and general updates that keep the reader’s attention. You can add industry trends and practices, new product or service offerings, employee profiles and case histories or testimonials of other customers successfully using your products or services.

How often should you prepare a newsletter? It depends upon your line of work and how often clients need your services. Of course, the amount you want to budget for the project will also dictate how often you publish. Don’t even consider a newsletter if you can’t publish it on at least a quarterly basis. Every six weeks and, ideally, monthly make the most sense. Part of the purpose of your newsletter is to keep your name in front of the client. Repetition certainly helps, but if the content is meaningless or simply a bunch of office jokes, even monthly mailings won’t serve any useful purpose . . . except perhaps to remind your customers and prospects how trite your newsletters are.

WHERE DO I BEGIN?
You need to walk before you run and starting a newsletter can be an overwhelming task, so start small. Don’t try to start out with an 8, 6 or even a four page newsletter right at the outset. Try composing a two-sided letter-size version first and do it on a regular basis. Decide how often you want to publish and stick to it. Look for industry news in trade publications, helpful articles about new trends, and be careful about copyright infringement. If there is any doubt, call the author or publisher and obtain permission to use their material. If you are assigning articles to be written by others in your firm, tell them what the deadline is and stick to it. Ther’s nothing worse than holding up an entire edition because one or two authors haven’t come through. If you have to go to press without their articles—do it! Chances are, if you delay publication, the other news in your edition will be out-of-date by the time it gets to the reader.

HOW DO I DISTRIBUTE MY NEWSLETTER?

The most common way to get your news to the customer is via the U.S. mail. If you’re not already doing regular mailings, we can help you prepare your lists and the newsletter for mailing. With the amount of mail that crosses people’s desks these days, experts agree that enclosing your newsletter in an envelope is unnecessary and adds additional cost. If you design it as a self-mailer with a label affixed to the outside, you’ll increase the chances that your newsletter will get read because the reader doesn’t have to mess with opening an envelope. Using an attractive layout and catchy masthead will also improve your chances for readability. Other ways you may want to consider distributing your news is to enclose it in product shipments, send it with delivery personnel or have your salespeople give it out on calls to customers and prospects. Sometimes that gives your sales force the “excuse” they need to see a customer they haven’t seen for a while. Of course you should always have extra copies to give to prospects and visitors at your place of business, too.

DESIGN TIPS
If you or someone in your firm will be responsible to produce camera-ready copy for publication, there are several things to consider to give your printed piece a professional touch. While you can save money by preparing the copy yourself, your newsletter can look like it was prepared by an amateur if you’re not familiar with basic design techniques. You may want to check out our page on preparing camera-ready copy for tips on using your computer to prepare typeset quality copy.

ARE THERE WAYS TO CUT COSTS?
One way already mentioned to save money is to prepare the camera-ready copy yourself. Another way is to carefully select your stock and ink color(s). While enamel (gloss) paper can make pictures look great, they can also make your newsletter look like a catalog or piece of direct mail advertising that may ultimately get discarded. A quality white opaque offset, a natural color like cream, ivory or gray or even one of the newer fiber-added stocks can make your newsletter look good and save money, too.