Carol Abrahamson, a regular Murdok reader, recently submitted her text e-newsletter to me for the drive by review. She sells her consulting services along with an info product, so her e-newsletter is a crucial part of her marketing initiative. For this review I looked primarily at ways she could take email reading patterns into account and create an e-newsletter that readers will use and feel connected with.
The index and editor’s note of her e-newsletter are beneath my comments. I cut her article and link-to article paragraphs for the sake of space.
Hi Carol,
The bulk of my comments will focus on your editor’s note — “Carol’s Comments,” but first I’d like to make note of a couple of basic issues that I feel are important for any e-newsletter editor.
Amount of Content: I had to learn this one the hard way, and some of my readers would argue that I’m still learning this one. Your e-newsletter weighs in at 4161 words. I try to keep Murdok at around 1500 words (and I publish the whole feature article). And that’s still a little heavy.
I’ll grant that Murdok readers are quite different from the Extraordinary Homes readers, but there are lots of people who simply don’t read if there appears to be a whole lot of text. More than there are people who don’t read because there’s too little text.
So my first suggestion is to cut your content WAY down, at least by half, if not by 2/3rds.
Here’s the wordcount breakdown of your newsletter:
ednote: 929
article: 1,207
related articles: 1,538
To cut down on the content, aim first at the 8 related articles and their accompanying paragraphs. Give me a one sentence description of the article that tells me quickly why I should read it. I would also suggest only having three of the most important related articles there.
Now, there is the issue of frequency to consider – your newsletter goes out once a month, while mine goes out twice a week. Still, you have to assume that people are always in a hurry when they read their email, even if they really like your ideas and related articles.
You will save yourself time by slimming down your content, and I think you will have a more efficient newsletter that readers actually end up spending MORE time with because they actually feel like they can finish it.
So I’d suggest cutting the entire word count on related articles down to about 150-300 words, and make sure these words explain to me the value of reading that particular article.
Was your subject line for your mailing the same as the one you sent to me? If so, “May 2003: More About Extraordinary Homes’ Convenience Built-ins” doesn’t strike my fancy. Your subject line must focus on the problem this particular issue of your newsletter helps people solve.
Now let’s look at the editor’s note. That’s the only part of your newsletter, besides the index, that I’m publishing here in my review (readers, if you’re interested in Carol’s newsletter sign up at her site).
First off the paragraphs are far too large. Large paragraphs make the content difficult to skim, and if it’s difficult to skim you’re only going to be hitting the minority of people who actually read every word you write. They’re out there, but there are far more people who skim. Break those paragraphs into more manageable and easy to navigate chunks.
Second, and you knew I’d come to this — I think there’s too much content here. Your editor’s note should be cut at least in half, and focus entirely (as possible) on reader benefit.
I already mentioned shortening the paragraphs, or at least splitting them up. This is vital in your editor’s note.
Your note focuses too much on what your company is doing. You have to assume that people are more interested in their homes and remodeling than on what your company is up to. Limit yourself to one paragraph that talks about you. Trust that the expertise exhibited in your article will convince people to contact you.
Also, the note shifts back and forth from “I” to “we.” Who am I actually dealing with?
Beef up your calls to reader actions too — especially those that focus on reader response. Be sure that any calls to action occur in their own, short, paragraph.
Those are my thoughts, Carol. Let me know what you think and if you need any clarification.
Best Wishes,
Garrett
The Extraordinary Homes Newsletter (excerpted)
Subject line: May 2003: More About Extraordinary Homes’ Convenience Built-ins
You are receiving this email because you subscribed to our Extraordinary Homes quarterly e-newsletter about home design ideas and trends. In this interim email you will learn about more of our collection’s convenience built-ins.
The bottom of this email describes subscribing, unsubscribing, changing your contact/email information and our privacy policy.
_______________________________________________
Contents:
Carol’s Comments
Article – Aging in Place: Fabulous Features That Make It Easy to Remain in Your Home as You Age
Article Summaries:
1. Housing Features: What Baby-Boomer Buyers Want
2. Bomb Shelters Updated: Safe at Home
3. All Clear: Add Space, Light and Brightness to Your Home With a Touch of Glass
4. Rooms for Your Wish List: New Homes, New Flexibility With Floor Plans
5. High-Speed Internet at Home: Broadband Gets Built In
6. Remodel Rather than Relocate: Boomers Remodel Empty Nests Their Way
7. A Caution About Safe Rooms: A War Room at Home
8. Humble No More: Bathrooms Are Bigger and Glitzier
_______________________________________________
Dear Fans of Our High-WOW!-Factor Convenience Built-ins,
A recent National Association of Homebuilders survey revealed that one-fourth of the 26 million home remodeling projects completed yearly involve at least one improvement that relates to the aging of the adults in the household. None of us wants to move into a retirement home or in with our kids. AARP and others publish long lists of well-known characteristics that make homes livable well into their owners’ retirement years. But I have over 100 less-well-known possibilities in my collection that also dramatically improve a home’s ability to support our living in it well beyond our 60s and 70s. I recently wrote an article for one of the Scottsdale AZ glossy magazines, listing a dozen modifications that make life easier as arthritis and mobility limitations set in, and I’ve pasted it below. I hope it will inspire you! If these ideas are premature for your home, perhaps they are right-on for your parents to consider. In June I will be mailing a press release about this story to all the home & garden editors in the country, so you may see some or all of it appear in your local newspaper this summer.
As I did last month, I’ve listed eight recent one-paragraph article summaries about various home design ideas I thought you might like to see, from my favorite National Association of Homebuilders weekly e-newsletter.
We continue to offer consulting that identifies — for homeowners, architects, builders and other home design professionals — the right convenience built-ins for their specific projects from our collection of more than 1,000. For clients who prefer to review all those ideas themselves and make their own choices, we are scheduled to start selling them through our Better Than Books! room-based reports via our www.extraordinaryhomes.com website in a few weeks. (An unexpected, sudden need to find a new webmaster, plus the workings of Murphy’s Law have delayed our reports by a few months.) Our quarterly e-newsletter is still on schedule to be introduced this summer, and the first of several Extraordinary Homes books continues to be expected in the stores early in 2005.
Everything we do relates to convenience built-ins. All our products and services are designed to bring you THE HOME OF YOUR DREAMS. Without your needing a big budget. A home that enhances your quality of life as it WOWS your family and friends. A home with increased value and leader-of-the-pack resale appeal. All while saving you hundreds of hours and dollars in attempting to identify these conveniences yourself.
We are also about to market a syndicated column to the Home & Garden section editors of the major US newspapers. (Next month we will tell you how you might encourage your local paper to print our weekly column.) The format will be a Feature of the Week, plus reader-posed situations followed by a list of our built-ins that address each situational issue. Situations such as,”we need to modify our home to accommodate our teenagers’ needs for individual privacy as well as to host their parties appropriately,” “my mother-in-law is coming to live with us and she has great difficulty bending and stooping — the same kind of difficulty I expect my husband and I will be having within a decade,” “I relax by spending my weekends immersed in do-it-yourself projects that will enhance my home’s value.” You get the idea. If you would like to submit a home design situation, dilemma or challenge for the column, we’d love to hear from you. Use the “Suggestions, Comments, Questions” box on our website’s Contact Us form at http://www.extraordinaryhomes.com/contact.html, or send an email to carol@extraordinaryhomes.com. Please label your submission “Column Situations,” so we file and respond to it appropriately. (We may print some of your situations and our responses in our e-newsletter, too!)
If you know of any convenience built-ins that we might not yet have discovered, we’d love to hear about them and occasionally share them with all our subscribers (mentioning your name, of course!). Use the “Suggestions, Comments, Questions” box on our website’s Contact Us form at http://www.extraordinaryhomes.com/contact.html, or send an email to carol@extraordinaryhomes.com. Please label or start your message to us with the words “Great Ideas.”
We hope you enjoy reading this email, and we will continue to send you occasional emails to help you learn about more of these fabulous ideas. We love hearing from you, so send us your “Letters to the Editor” at any time using our Contact Us page at http://www.extraordinaryhomes.com/contact.html, or send an email to carol@extraordinaryhomes.com. Don’t forget to tell us what topics you’d like us to cover and which questions to answer in our e-newsletters or our interim emails.
Feel free to forward this email (without any edits or changes to its content or format, please) to anyone you think would benefit from seeing it, and please mention us as its source. They may subscribe at our website’s Contact Us form at http://www.extraordinaryhomes.com/contact.html. We love helping new subscribers discover these built-ins!
We are constantly working to improve our services that promote these features, as well as the quality of information we provide to you. If you like what we are doing, please let us know. Tell us, too, what we can improve or add to our services. And if our information has made a difference to your life and your home, please tell your friends and family about us. That’s how we grow and expand the number of people who know about these fabulous features!
Thanks so much for your interest and support! Keep your suggestions, comments and questions coming. We love to hear from you!
Wishing you the greatest success in all your endeavors,
Carol Abrahamson
_____________________________________
Extraordinary Homes
Affordable Convenience Built-ins for Every Home
Carol Abrahamson
President
2675 West Highway 89A, #1241
Sedona AZ 86336
928.284.5753
http://www.extraordinaryhomes.com
carol@extraordinaryhomes.com
Garrett French is the editor of Murdok’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.
