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The Best Newsletters in America

Using newsletters to expand your business, introduce new products, encourage repeat business.

Want to build awareness of your company, reposition it, expand its customer base, introduce new products, and encourage repeat business? Do your newsletter right -- not expensively, but right -- and you will. Here's how

Thanks to the age of the desktop press, newsletters are inheriting the earth. The weapon of choice for legions of frugal marketers, newsletters now bombard company mail rooms as heavily as catalogs once did. You can expect them from suppliers, bankers, lawyers, accountants, consultants, printers, and overnight couriers. Followed by others from insurers, distributors, and brokers. Odds are, you even publish one of your own.

Their staggering proliferation notwithstanding (an estimated 100 million are published on the North American continent today), most newsletters never get read. Poor-quality, deadly boring, and self-congratulatory, they end up in the circular file or composting in an I'll-get-to-it-someday stack. Still, from the scores we surveyed, newsletters, when done right, can work marketing magic: they can build awareness, expand a customer base, encourage repeat business, introduce new products, help position a company, and save you a bundle in the process.

However, before you park yourself in front of your computer to churn out your first issue, take some point-ers from these smart marketers who have developed, designed, and distributed newsletters both to capture new customers and to keep the old.

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Set Goals
Glen White, owner of Scientific Information Services, of Fort Worth, knows exactly what his newsletter should accomplish. The goal: six new contracts a month. White's business -- a management-consulting firm that advises clients on hazardous-waste regulations -- is not the stuff of glamorous ads. It's so specialized, it borders on the obscure: "Not that many people would know where to begin to look for a hazardous-chemical-management consultant." Advertising and cold calling produced meager results. Chemical-company managers, his prime customers, viewed his company as an arm of the government, an enemy instead of an ally. Until, that is, White began publishing a monthly newsletter -- chock-full of information about new laws and industry trends -- that built trust, warmed sales prospects, and soon began yielding the sought-after six new accounts a month.

Like White, Nashville lawyer Brian Smith and financial adviser Rita Mitchell in nearby Goodlettsville, Tenn., wield newsletters to level obstacles to growth. For Smith, launching a specialty law practice -- in copyright and intellectual property -- meant overcoming anonymity: "I had to get my name out in front of people. Let them know I exist." It was a lesson he knew from hard experience -- an earlier attempt at starting a practice had failed. "I basically sat behind a desk and waited for clients to show up," he says. "They never came."

By publishing a newsletter, he could demonstrate expertise and establish a referral network with fellow lawyers as well as clients. In three years his practice has grown from zero to $300,000 in revenues. "I'd hate to think where I'd be without this newsletter."

Mitchell wanted to reposition herself as an investment adviser after years of brokering insurance. She'd get better margins for less time servicing accounts. But before she could tackle that challenge, she had another hurdle to clear: bias. "It's difficult to get people comfortable enough to give you their money to invest, but especially if you're black. Writing the newsletter gave me credibility. It showed people I know what I'm talking about." For the $1,000 she spent each year on newsletters, she has garnered $30,000 worth of securities business. Not a bad return on investment.

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Pick Your Audience Carefully
Do you want to communicate with customers only? If your goal is to get them to come back, as it is for Tom Kusmerz of the Barn Nursery & Landscape Center, in Cary, Ill., then current accounts are the obvious audience. Kusmerz sends his newsletter only to the 2,200 customers who request it. "They have to come into the store and sign up for it. That way, I know we're not wasting our effort."

But perhaps you want to introduce new products or extend your reach. Smith sends his "Smith Report" every quarter to 2,300 readers -- only a tenth are clients; the rest are prospects or referrals. He considers his newsletter an "incredible tool for getting new clients." But its effectiveness results largely from his vigilant management of his mailing list.

"Everybody who calls and asks me a copyright question goes on the mailing list." He uses directories of marketing, computer, and music-industry professionals to build his database. He buys lists from the local advertising bureau. Smith keeps careful track of leads -- friends, family, old clients -- and updates his list frequently. When he sends out his newsletters (at a bulk rate), he includes a request for address corrections and a tear-off response card at the bottom of each. "Readers can fax them back. Within two to three weeks, I always get 10 or 15 responses and the names of more leads to add to the list." And when he attends trade shows or conventions, he pays the modest fee to have his newsletter stuffed among the giveaways that go to attendees.

Beyond targeting current or would-be accounts, it may make sense to direct the newsletter to just about everyone you do business with. The Coffee Connection, a $10-million coffee retailer in Allston, Mass., sends its "Newsnotes" to 250 people on a VIP mailing list: investors, suppliers, strategic partners, food writers, landlords, developers, and bankers. "It's a great tool for bankers," says marketing director Andrew Frank. "It lets them see something besides the numbers: a live company."