I read a post on Craft Boom about writing better customer newsletters and it got me to thinking about the real value in newsletters. I know that many people give up on their newsletters early on as they are gauging a newsletters worth on the amount of direct sales that they receive from them.  A newsletter is certainly a sales tool but it’s also a branding tool and a way of keeping your company name in your customers minds on a regular basis. If you’re not seeing direct sales from your newsletter, maybe it’s time to change your approach.

Newsletters that do well offer real value to a customer. Value is what keeps them reading it.  In addition to offering company news and product discounts, you can post tips and tricks to prolong the life of a product, industry news that may be relative to your products and fringe topics that relate to your business, locale or industry in some way. If you open up your topic base beyond just what is going on in your company and include relevant information they find useful, you can gain your audience’s interest and keep it. In doing so, you’ve increased the chances that they will think of you the next time they need to purchase soaps or scrubs.

Having said all that, I also believe that people read a blog post or newsletter and forget about it an hour later. The company and products are not completely forgotten but the current savings opportunity can be. Given a month to act, I’ll bookmark a sale to come back to later but more often than not I’ll forget about it before the sale has ended. On the other hand, if I am enticed to purchase THAT DAY and THAT DAY ONLY, I will take the time to do it right away. Many refer to this tactic as a “call to action” and it’s important. If you have one shot in each newsletter to get the customer to purchase, you need to make your call to action enticing enough for them to do it while they are sitting at the computer just a mouse click away from your online shop.

I’m in no way saying that month long sales are a bad idea. You just have to keep in mind the very short attention span of shoppers. Remind them of your offer and inspire them to act on a regular basis until the sale has ended. I am living proof that telling me about it in one newsletter only is a waste of time.

For more great newsletter topic ideas, read the Craft Boom post “Writing Good Shop Newsletters.”