Avoid These Critical Mistakes With Your Newsletter

by Jim Palmer, The Newsletter Guru



In my business of creating and designing customer newsletters, I spend a great deal of time writing. Like most things, practice makes perfect. As I may have mentioned before, I read also read many books. Reading also makes one a better writer.

While most of my feature articles tend to focus on what you should do in your newsletter, in this week's newsletter I'm going to focus on a few things that you should absolutely avoid as you produce your own customer newsletter.

Here are Four Critical Mistakes You MUST Avoid!


Not providing contact information--It's hard to believe, but I have seen this too many times. If you're going to take the time to create a great marketing tool such as a customer newsletter, don't forget to tell your readers how to contact you, and preferably more than one way!


Forgetting it's not about you--There is always a big temptation when you start writing your newsletter to write about what is on your mind or what's important in your world. WRONG! If your customers are going to read and enjoy your newsletter, and therefore read it again and again, it must contain information and content that is important to them. My mantra for many years is that your customer newsletter needs to be fun, informative, and entertaining - to your customer.


Not enough pictures--One of the quickest ways to get your newsletter NOT READ is to load it up with a lot of text and no pictures. I often joke with my clients about my patented rule of thumb for readability. Here it is: if people look at your newsletter and quickly determine that it can be read in ten minutes or less, chances are it will probably get read; otherwise it won't. It will likely go into the pile of things that someone intends to read but probably never will.


Lack of distinctive personality--The kiss of death for any newsletter is being boring. People get enough boring marketing messages thrown at them every day. It is essential to give your newsletter some personality. Make your readers feel they are a part of something fun and unique. Trust me on this; your readers will look forward to every newsletter if they can learn something, are entertained, and know they will end up smiling.
By the way, pardon the shameless plug, but if you're looking for the ultimate resource of fun, entertaining, and informative content, then check out my wildly popular and successful Success Advantage 2.0 newsletter. This is the absolute best 'Done-for-You' No Hassle Newsletter program available, period! If you can "cut and paste," you will love Success Advantage.


Jim Palmer is known internationally as 'Newsletter Guru, the go-to resource for smart, effective strategies for maximizing the profitability of customer relationships. Jim is also the acclaimed author of The Magic of Newsletter Marketing - The Secret to More Profits and Customers for Life. Jim's most popular 'Done-for-For' No Hassle Newsletter program is called Success Advantage 2.0.