The Best Newsletters in America

Of course, there's no rule saying you have to assemble a mailing list at all. Or even deliver your newsletter by conventional mail. Drew Reid Kerr of Four Corners Communications, a public-relations firm in New York City, distributes his newsletter on-line. And it costs him nothing. That's right, zip. By sending his newsletter electronically, he avoids mailing costs. He doesn't have to buy or compile a mailing list in advance. He simply uploads the newsletter and lets those who are interested download it at a cost of only a few cents per issue. In the beginning 75 users read it. Now a couple hundred receive each issue. Kerr estimates 40% of his revenues have resulted from the on-line newsletter.

Inform, don't Sell
Whatever audience you select for your newsletter, know what it wants to hear from you. And brace yourself: that may not be the pitch on your latest product. What the readers of Kusmerz's newsletter want to know, for example, is gardening: when to plant, what to plant where, how to make it grow. They want the inside dope on rhododendrons. And so Kusmerz's newsletter delivers it -- advice and information that discount, self-serve chains can't provide.

The moral: Let the sales literature tout the products. To get read, a newsletter must add value by informing the reader. At companies such as the Coffee Connection, educating the customer is the cornerstone of marketing. "The more sophisticated customers are about coffee," says president George Howell, "the more likely they are going to stay loyal to us." So six times a year Howell crams his two-page newsletter with facts about coffee, growing regions, blends, and equipment. He also promotes the company's free coffee seminars, which are heavily attended as a result.

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.

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."

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