Your Customers Love Quality Business Newsletters

Even in this digital age, newsletters are an essential part of your business marketing. Newsletters can both inform and excite prospective customers about your business, while current clients truly appreciate your news and updates.

There are many ways to create an engaging and informative newsletter. Here are a few of those strategies:

Frequency

How often are you sending out your newsletters? Customers can get overwhelmed by too many updates in given amount of time, so focus on creating a single monthly newsletter that engages your audience and draws new clients to your business.

If you are sending out newsletters too infrequently, your clients are bound to forget that your business exists. Be consistent, but don’t overwhelm.

Themes

Creating your newsletter around a certain subject or theme is guaranteed to boost readership. An organized newsletter is definitely easier for consumers to digest as opposed to cluttered information.

Readability

You are writing to clients, but are you communicating with them? Readers are sure to enjoy your newsletter content when it is written in a way they can relate to. Don’t be so serious, have some fun!

Graphics and Photos

Including graphics or photos in your newsletter is a definite way to keep your readers interested. Most individuals are visually stimulated, and your clients will appreciate that they are not drowning in text.

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Your business newsletter is bound to bring in new and returning customers with these simple tips. Are there other ways you have spruced up a dull newsletter in the past?

Every business in Santa Rosa wants to grow.  We have been talking about how businesses in Sonoma County have been using business referral marketing, newsletters and postcards to attract new business.  Often after the initial contact a follow up written on your letterhead is the next step.

With your letterhead and business card you begin building the relationships that will make your business a success.  The image that others form about your company will be influenced by the stationery that you use.  Following are some design secrets that will aid you in creating and using fine business stationery.

Choose a good quality paper

Don’t skip on the paper.  The paper is a small part of the overall business stationery package, usually less than 20%.  Trying to save money here may be penny wise and pound foolish.  Choose a paper that has some cotton content.  The cotton makes the paper feel warmer and appears more professional.

Create a strong logo

Make sure that your company name and logo communicate clearly who you are and what you do.  You don’t want somebody guessing at what you do after they see your name.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money creating a logo. Your business name, set up well, can do the job.

Use a tag line

Your name alone may say it all and your logo, if you have one, may present you as a professional, but using a statement that explains what you do and communicates how that benefits your customer can keep working for you long after your initial contact.

A gardener in Sebastopol had the phrase “Expect Excellence” as part of his business stationery.  I always felt this set the groundwork for what his customers could expect in dealing with him.  A simple tag line can be powerful communicator when used properly.

Create your personal identity

Communicate the appropriate message to your prospective clients. Do they want to know you are licensed, insured, professional, new or old, creative and innovative, a larger, secure corporation or a nimble start up?  Give some thought to the image your real customers will be most attracted to and build that into your letterhead and envelopes.

All businesses communicate with their business stationery.  You want to do it well and appropriately.  Whether you are in Windsor or Rohnert Park, you have competition in your business, use your business card, letterhead and envelopes to distinguish you when you get to that all important presentation of a proposal to do business together.

Written by David Walrath

Ajalon Printing & Design

Ok, we’ve have been talking about how printed newsletters are so great.  So tell me about somebody in Santa Rosa or Sebastopol who used newsletters and helped their business.  Does it really happen?

Newsletters do work.  I mentioned “By Referral Only” earlier.  Joe Stumpf does a marvelous job of training real estate professionals to use newsletters as part of their business growth and referral.  Following is a testimony of one of those agents recounting the impact of her newsletter:

Pam Sitterly, with RE/MAX, sends her newsletter to 225 clients a month.

“I attribute about 65% of my income to my Client Newsletter,” says Pam. “I invest $1.17 per client per mailing. I send it in a 6″ x 9″ envelope and pay for two-ounce postage. I mail 225 newsletters per month and it brings me a $29-to-$1 return.

“The newsletter is the single best investment that I know of for keeping in touch. My clients never wonder if I’m still in the business, because they have a monthly reminder that I’m still their Realtor, with my name and contact information easily at their fingertips.

“Preparing the newsletter gives me great pleasure, even though my assistant takes care of the bulk of it. I frequently receive compliments on it, which I love. Readers find it endearing, and it establishes a rapport that otherwise might not occur so quickly.

“I make the newsletter my own by including a monthly staging tip and real estate Q&A. Page eight is always a full-page flyer promoting one of my listings. Almost every month readers enter the trivia contest to win a pair of movie tickets.

“The newsletter is as much a part of my real estate business as buyers and sellers. It helps define who I am and how I run my business. It is extremely important to me and is one of the reasons I love what I do.”

So there you have it.  One business person who uses her newsletter and finds it very profitable. I would be willing to wager that those who don’t use a newsletter probably think that it doesn’t work.  Those who do probably have real life experience that it does.

You can see in Pam’s testimony the benefits that a newsletter has for any business, whether you are in Windsor or Petaluma or anywhere is the Wine Country.  Sending out a newsletter serves as a monthly reminder to your customers.  It establishes rapport and gets clients involved in your business and thinking of you.

Pam even sees it as creating part of her identity.  The professional who stays in touch.  Wouldn’t that be how we would like our customers to think of us?  She feels proud about using this valuable marketing piece and it gives her greater job satisfaction.  All things we love to hear.

Written by David Walrath

Ajalon Printing & Design

Stay Alive. Stay in touch with your clients.  Don’t let anyone drive a wedge between you and your customer.

Our customers are feeling pressure like never before.  Many are scared and looking for any help they can get.  They are looking to cut costs anyway they can.  So now is the time to stay in touch with them.  Your customers may have been loyal for many years but if someone comes in front of them and you have neglected your relationship they may forget your years of service and move on.

I know because this has happened to me recently.  A long time client sent out a large job to another shop, right in the midst of us doing other, smaller jobs.  Ouch!  Many businesses are trying to buy business by being very aggressive in price cutting.  It is difficult to protect completely against this but the best prevention is to stay in touch with clients.

One of the best ways to stay in touch is with a newsletter.  There are many forms of newsletters, from the very simple to the very elaborate.  A client of ours that sells a premium product stays in touch with their customers through a regular mailing of a simple one-color newsletter.  The quality of their product speaks for itself and there is no need to put a lot of puff and circumstance in the newsletter.

Another fine way to keep in touch is with postcards.  Postcards are quickly and easily read.  There is no need to open an envelope.  Their postage is less than a letter and there is no stuffing and licking involved. And it seems that postcard are tossed in drawers and kept around more than letters.  I know I use them for bookmarkers.

In addition to using postcards on a regular basis to promote seasonal or special events postcards can be used to thank customers for business. You can get a stack of postcards made for your business and keep them handy to send out after a job is completed, sending a handwritten note saying thank you.

Contests are another was to stay in touch and help you be top of mind with your customers.  One of our clients uses a postcard to announce a contest that he has each year about this time rewarding all his customers of the years with an opportunity to win a vacation get away.  What a great way to stay in touch and say thank at the same time.  And all for a little more than quarter postage.

It is the holiday season and cards can keep you in front of your clients.  And it can be helpful to think outside the box here.  If everybody is going to be sending holiday cards, send yours before or after the rush.  At Ajalon we have sent out Thanksgiving cards rather than December holiday cards.  Our cards come before everybody has become ho-hum about all the cards.  We have also sent out a Happy New Year card in January, after people are back from the holidays.  This assures us of standing out and being noticed.

At Ajalon we have the ability to meet what ever you want in terms of newsletters or cards.  We can produce short runs digitally or print thousands of newsletters, all economically.  We have templates of pre-designed holiday cards that we can personalize and even address the envelopes for you.  Or we can custom design something that you want done if you have a vague idea of what you want or if you have a clear idea in your mind.

When you want to stay in touch with your clients, remember Ajalon is here to help.

Written by David Walrath

Ajalon Printing & Design