While the Coffee Connection pursues a soft sell with its newsletter, the information it peddles does, in fact, sell coffee. When Howell raved in his column about one blend, it shot from 10th or 11th place to 3rd or 4th among the company's best-sellers -- remarkable considering it costs $12.95 a pound.
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Keep it Simple
It's only too easy to make the mistake that Experience in Software Inc., in Berkeley, Calif., did. The embryonic software developer undertook such an elaborate newsletter that its maiden issue became virtually its last. President Roy Nierenberg paid a PR firm to write the four-color, eight-page extravaganza, a design firm to package it, a printer to run nearly 15,000 copies, and a mailing house to slap addresses and 45¢ worth of postage on each one. "I spent $10,000 on the first issue," says Nierenberg, who had hoped the newsletter would pay for itself with a couple of lucrative licensing deals. It didn't. "It was complete overkill."
More companies, small and large, now recognize that splashy, multipage newsletters not only cost too much but are seldom read. To avoid being consigned to those unread stacks, smart newsletter marketers take a minimalist tack and limit their publications to one or two 8.5-inch-by-11-inch pages. Consider Ed Laflamme, owner of Laflamme Services, a commercial landscape contractor in Bridgeport, Conn. Laflamme puts out his "Shades of Green" on a single sheet of paper. Articles on topics ranging from how to fight beetles to recycling grass come three or four to a page and require a few hours with a word processor and a laser printer to produce. Each issue is photocopied on newsletter stock preprinted with a two-color nameplate to save money. Postage runs $300. Like Laflamme, financial adviser Mitchell sends her missive out on a single sheet. Short, informative, formatted, it delivers tax tips or financial advice in two-line or three-line blurbs. No confusing jargon, no long-winded pitches. Just quick, readable bites of advice.
Where does the material to fill a newsletter come from? Mitchell scours financial journals, trade magazines, and business publications. Laflamme harvests useful tidbits from the horticultural press and what he observes, quite literally, in the field. Scientific Information Services pores over government documents -- a task White and his staff would do anyway just to keep abreast -- and apprises readers of changes that may affect them. In short, share the knowledge you gather as you keep up in your industry. Just condense it, or tell readers where you found it.
And don't overlook the wealth of material to be found among customers. They can serve as your newsletter's subjects as well as its readers. Mitchell gives clients coverage on the simple theory that if she puts them in the newsletter, they'll want to read it. Her clients are proving it true. "I trash 90% of the newsletters I receive," says customer Sherry Cummings. "Hers I keep in a file." Mitchell says, "The more I get clients involved, the more loyal they're going to be, and the more likely they are to send me referrals and more business."
No matter what you write about, the look of your newsletter, while important, need not be lavish. True, it may demand a slick (and costly) look if you compete in an industry -- such as retail -- where style is important. But even that's not always the case. Michael Yag, president of Access TCA Inc., in Whitinsville, Mass., a $4-million Inc. 500 company, abstains from high gloss, even though his exhibition business trades on showing marketing managers how to make a splash at trade shows. "The newsletter doesn't look as though you'll have to pay a fortune for whatever it is we're going to sell." Yag's newsletter invites the eye without suggesting there's a huge price tag attached.
You also can use colors or paper to strengthen the image you want to project. To suggest healthy flora, Laflamme, in his newsletter, "Shades of Green," uses a bold nameplate printed in guess what color. Kusmerz sends an environmentally correct message by printing his newsletter on recycled paper.
For early issues, it's OK to type on your letterhead. Best Regards, a start-up in Bonita, Calif., prints its newsletter marketing the company's custom-label wines on two pages of stationery. No more than six paragraphs long, it provides concise information about different wines and costs little to produce.
Whatever design you choose, your newsletter should look more or less the same each time. Novices can be tempted to change the layout and jigger with the design of each issue. Don't. Choose a simple format, with sections that appear consistently from issue to issue. A one-time fee of $200 to $300 should pay for a free-lance designer who'll provide a flexible and reusable design.
Format the content of your newsletter as well. Mitchell's newsletter always includes the same three sections. Access president Yag and the Coffee Connection's Howell each write regular columns. Yag's newsletter faithfully delivers a few interesting graphics and a column of industry news briefs. Soheil Zendeh, owner of GT Shop, an automotive-repair business in Watertown, Mass., leads off each issue of his newsletter with a mystery, in which he solves or traces the source of common car troubles.
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Stay Involved
The best newsletters we sampled bore the strong stamp of the CEOs behind them. "No one is more tuned in to what customers want than I am," says Laflamme. "If I hired someone else to write it, I'd have to spend so much time with them. It might even take more time to explain to someone else."
Of the column he writes, Howell says, "It is the first arm by which I connect to those customers. It's my direct line." Yet he puts in only an hour to do it, delegating the rest. And the column requires no extra research time, because he writes about what he already knows -- coffee.
While CEOs should keep a hand in their company newsletters, they shouldn't overcontrol them. At the Barn Nursery, Tom Kusmerz holds seasonal meetings with 8 key people three months before each issue. There's no shortage of ideas. "Everybody wants a piece of that newsletter, because they know it will help move product in their departments." At first employees were reluctant to write articles. Now they compete for space. Eight to 10 people will contribute to each issue. "Employees get to write about something they really like. It gets them more involved in the business. And by the time each issue is done, everybody in the company knows more about a few topics." Kusmerz also gets his suppliers involved -- they provide free artwork and some dollars for co-op advertising.
