(Nearly) every newsletter should have a note from the editor. You can use this section to tell readers about your pets or kids, you can use it to tell them about your new office, or you can use it to tell them about your flaming kitchen sponge.
Recently Jamie Kiley of Kianta used her Editor’s Letter to talk about her experience with our newsletter. She even recommended her subscribers check it out (and with utmost confidence I recommend her newsletter as well –it’s a fast read full of great information). Of course, I was flattered, especially because she did it so graciously. But, beyond that, she let her readers know that there’s a person behind her newsletter.
And that’s precisely the job of your Editor’s Letter.
The rest of your newsletter needs to be helpful and well planned. It should be general enough to appeal to the majority of your readers, specific enough that it’s clearly from your company.
Put Your Personality on Display
In your Editor’s Letter, though, you have the single best reason for people to do business with you–you.
For those of you who work independently *you* genuinely are the company. And you make it clear who you are in this letter more than anywhere else.
For those of you who work as a part of a much larger team, the Editor’s Letter is no less important. In fact, in some ways it’s all the more important–customers may see your company as a giant, faceless corporation. They may believe you’re indifferent to them–and, of course, indifference is the number one reason customers do business with the competition. (If you want the stats on that, just send me an email.)
Now, I’m not just telling you to write an Editor’s Letter just because I *think* they work.
In study after study of our clients’ newsletters, we consistently find higher response rates, higher subscribe rates, lower unsubscribe rates, and more frequent and larger orders result from newsletters with Editor’s Letters.
Your mileage may vary, of course, but I can almost guarantee that including a well-written, personal Editor’s Letter in each issue of your newsletter will be well worth the time you spend.
Finding the Right Topics for Readers
So, now that you’ve decided to include an Editor’s Letter in each issue, what should you write about?
Well, you can follow Jamie’s lead and include a personal endorsement of sorts. In Jamie’s case, she was suggesting readers follow up with unsubscribers to find out why they’ve left (this is a great idea, by the way–you can learn all sorts of things you otherwise wouldn’t).
You can also follow my lead and write about your spring cleaning gone wrong. Actually, for me, this story’s a bit more embarrassing than those I typically share, but I thought it’d make the point that you really can write about *anything* in your Editor’s Letter.
You might write about a lesson you’ve just learned or an experience with one of your kids. Pets frequently make great topics. If you’re going to get this personal, make sure you don’t overdo it. We’ve all had that experience where someone we’ve just met reveals too much–remember much like a date, your goal with each newsletter is to see the reader again.
Your Editor’s Letter is a great place to announce new products, new plans, new anything. In fact, it’s the one place you can really write about your company and why you love it without sounding like a sales person.
A couple of the clients I talked to this month about starting Editor’s Letters were concerned about offending their readers. If this is a concern of yours as well, consider this: if you’re not annoying someone, making someone unsubscribe, upsetting someone so much they fire off an email to you in response every once in awhile, well, you’re also not maximizing your newsletter’s power.
Your newsletter is about appealing to your ideal reader and to do that well, you’re going to have to alienate someone.
So, write about flaming sponges, great experiences (or bad ones), lessons learned, and your company. You’ll engage your readers, get them talking back, and make more sales.
And what more could you ask for?
Ready to engage customers, make more sales, and boost profits? Visit http://www.designdoodles.com to get started.
Want more tips on making your newsletter personable?
Subscribe to Newsletters in Focus for free tips every two
weeks on creating wonderful newsletters. Visit
http://www.designdoodles.com/free_newsletter.htm to sign up
and receive your free copy of “Do You Make These Six
Mistakes in Your Company Newsletter?”
