Switched to Blogger
Posted on: January 29, 2011
I’ve switched to Blogger because of the flexibility with layout and appearance/themes it offers. Visit the new site at http://starbrightbusiness.blogspot.com/
- In: Customer Service | Marketing | Newsletters | Products
- 2 Comments
While Amazon’s regular emails with product suggestions do not fully qualify as newsletters, they give us yet another example of a simple way to remind customers of your product.
Amazon sends out regular emails to me, featuring products I might be interested in based on my previous purchases. The emails start with a summary of products and their photos and then gives more product details. They get me interested in a product before they give me the details. The summary also serves as a useful way of telling me what I’m in for. All newsletters should make their point clear from the very first sentence to the subject headline.
A quick word of caution based on Amazon‘s emails, however. While the emails are sometimes helpful, they come far too often and are often repetitious, which easily gets on my nerves. Always be careful to avoid annoying your customers with too many emails. It’s usually more useful to pick a regular date on which to send your newsletter and at a rate that will not annoy customers.
What do you add to your newsletters to remind customer’s of your products?
Read Newsletters Part 1
Read Newsletters Part 2
Women of Faith knows how to produce a good e-newsletter. Not only do they provide regular devotionals and other encouraging articles from well-known writers and speakers, but they also make it easy to shop for their products. Several of the emails they send out every year focus on products alone, while other content-driven newsletters include links to the Women of Faith online store.
More often than not, newsletters focus on the public relations goals of improving the customer’s perception of the company and improving customer knowledge of and interaction with the company, but newsletters can still market or sell the company, as well. The more the customer likes the company, the more likely the customer is to buy the company’s product. And newsletters serve as a facilitator that allows you to make it simple and easy for customers to find and buy your products.
For example, a recent Women of Faith newsletter included the following graphic:
What do you add to your newsletters to remind customer’s of your products?
Read Newsletters Part 1
Newsletters can be a useful method for keeping your customers interested in what you have to offer. They give customers a gentle nudge and a friendly reminder of your existence.
Whether you use a physical newsletter or an e-newsletter depends on your audience. An older audience might prefer a physical paper, while a younger, tech-savvy audience may prefer an e-newsletter delivered straight to their email.
Last summer, I worked for a theatre company (Sierra Repertory Theatre) that used both methods. They created a physical paper a few times a year that they sent to season subscribers and put on display for audience members to read while they waited for shows to start. SRT also sends out an e-newsletter through PatronMail twice a month. The newsletter provides a quick introductory news blurb written as a personal note from the marketing director. It then goes on to provide articles about people involved in current productions. Theatre goers like to learn about what goes on behind the scenes, and the local audience that SRT serves is an old-fashioned one that prefers reading about people over reading about news. SRT’s newsletter caters to its audience. It also provides sidebars that remind readers of current production dates and of needs for volunteer ushers.
What do you do to make your newsletter successful?
Broadway in San Francisco illustrated the importance of interacting with customers via social networks today. They hosted an interactive session in which Facebook fans could ask Shrek (of Shrek the Musical) any question, and he answered. View the conversation here.
Courtesy of Broadway in San Francisco http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=478227648502&set=a.128424348502.105135.69821828502&theater
Just another way to earn yourself publicity: Get in the holiday spirit and do something nice for society.
The stars of Shrek the Musical visited a children’s hospital during their run in San Francisco. See photos here.
Courtesy of http://wonderlandgroups.com/
The (so far) hit musical “Wonderland” is coming to Broadway in the spring. The modern take on the classic Alice in Wonderland is beginning to brand itself, not only with its regular website, but also with a simple, enjoyable, interactive story book that allows viewers to flip through a few pages that tell the basic premise of the show and that give viewers a preview of the show in pictures.
The show has also come up with a clever tag line: “A New Alice. A New Musical.”
The story book certainly has my attention, and I look forward to seeing how the show markets itself in the future. The musical is one of the first Alice in Wonderland musicals, but Alice in Wonderland has been rehashed in film many times, so it should be interesting to see how this takes on.
Star Bright Business 