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There are lots of different variations of Enewsletter templates but how do you know which one will be the most effective for your target audience?

Enewsletters can be long, short, visually led or a simple plain text file that are predominantly viewed on computers and laptops. However, with the increase in smart phone sales, more people are now accessing their emails via their mobiles and not all newsletter templates are ‘small screen’ friendly.

Quick tips for designing Enewsletter templates:

• Single column newsletters work best for mobile phones
• 20% of emails will not automatically load images, therefore, ensure your headings and main benefits are text so that they appear straight away in the email.
• Only 0.2% of people read introductory text. You’re best getting straight to the point with your main product/service benefits
• People receive lots of spam everyday and are eager to clear their inboxes. You have just 1.5 seconds to grab their attention.
• Viewers tend to look at the top right area of an enewsletter first – use this space well particularly for your sales messages.
• Enewsletter templates should be no longer than a page and a half. Stick to a maximum of 3-4 paragraphs of copy.

These are just a few tips to help you create the most effective enewsletter templates. In Part 5, I will focus on the technical aspects of e-newsletters by exploring the most effective ways of sending your enewsletter out.

If you can’t wait for Part 5 and you would like to speak to one of us here at Changeworks, please call us on 01785 247588 or email info@changeworkscom.co.uk

Building a relationship takes time. It cannot be achieved by sending the occasional newsletter or advert. Whether you’re focusing on new or existing customers, there needs to be a regular flow of communication that attracts attention and gets them engaged in your brand.

If you think about the relationships you have with your family and friends, they are not built by only one person talking and the other listening. Relationships require interaction. You need to find out things about each other and understand the type of person they are.

E-newsletters help to do just that with customers. They can increase brand awareness as well as the value proposition you provide to them. The following tips explain how you can create effective e-newsletters to help kick-start or develop customer relationships.

1) Adopt a personable approach: When you send an e-newsletter out, use a person’s email address as the sender not an info@ or sales@. Let the writer’s personality come through in the copy – although you want to remain professional, don’t always limit your newsletters to ‘business speak’. Keep it personable, simple and easy to read.

2) Provide information of value: Fill your e-newsletters with details about what your customers are going to enjoy from your product, services etc rather than how great your company is. As I mention in my previous post, you need to keep asking “what’s in it for them?” To help kick-start a relationship ‘special offers’ i.e. 10% off, save £100 etc are good incentives, especially if the customers are unknown.

3) Keep the communication flowing: Relationships cannot not be built by the odd newsletter sent out here and there, keep your communication regular. It usually takes six communications before generating a new lead. One newsletter a month is the least you should send, any fewer and people may forget that they signed up to receive it and will see it as “spam”. On the other hand, sending too many newsletters will risk you losing customers because they can’t keep up with the amount of information.

4) Get your customers to interact with your brand: As much as a customer may want to find out about your goods/services, you need to find out what they need. In order to offer the best product or service, your customers have certain requirements. The way you can find this out is to include links to polls, surveys or discussion forums so that they interact with you and they can tell you what they need.

These are just a few tips to help you build relationships with your customers. In Part 3, I will focus on how you can put a newsletter together and the most effective ways of sending them out.

If you can’t wait for Part 3 and you would like to speak to one of us here at Changeworks, please call us on 01785 247588 or email info@changeworkscom.co.uk

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Part Five – Using a presenter to tell your story:

With a rapid increase in the popularity of online video, how can you get your message heard above all others?

With the advances in mobile phones and digital cameras, video making has become widely accessible. Anyone can pick up a camera, shoot some footage, string it together using a basic video editing software, but the finished result (more likely than not) will not utilise the professionalism needed to make a marketing video stand out.

Part five of this blog series offers practical tips and advice for using presenters to tell your story. Novels are often written in the first person with the author taking on the task of telling his/her own story. Biographical works use a third person style. But what about video? A further dimension is added here as we can also see what is going on.  Although it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, often it is useful to have spoken words to link pictures together or bring something to life. Here are two examples of how you can use the spoken word in your video:

Telling your story with words:

• Voice over/Presenter: A voice over can provide additional information to the piece or explain something that may too be difficult to understand in a visual sense. As an alternative to a disembodied voice-over you might like to consider using someone to front your video – in other words, a presenter. Breaking the words up between presenter and voice over adds human interest and provides continuity even when the presenter is not seen on screen.
  
  

  How to use voxpops

• Vox Pop: Vox pops are commonly used in advertising and documentaries to sound out popular opinion using informal comments from members of the public. Think of aquestion related to your film and carry out street interviews with lots of people. Vox pops require the minimum of two people; one to ask the questions and two to do the filming. Shoot your interviewee close-up and facing slightly to the left or right. Make sure that you get a variation of angles for when you edit your video as shooting them all one way will not make a professional looking film. If you do shoot your interviewees all at one angle, your video editing software may feature the ‘horizontal flip’ filter enabling you to flip your shots around.

If you would like to find out more about online video, please visit our Changeworks website

Measuring the value of online PR is perhaps even more critical than any form of PR.  Online PR measurement will not only help in justifying the investment, it will help you to understand SEO and optimise efforts.

As with any marketing practice, it all starts with well defined outcomes.  What is the goal of online PR?  Is it to position the brand or client as expert or thought leader? Or is it about coverage and brand awareness?  What is the proposition and what key messages support this?  For example, if the goal is about positioning the client along the lines of certain key messages, then measuring key message usage in connection with news and PR content at regular intervals can demonstrate achievement of objectives.

Online PR metrics should include the traditional clippings evaluation:

• Title
• Headline
• URL
• Photo or not?
• Content
• Tone of piece
• Origin
• Quote or not?
• Key Messages
• Column cm or screen coverage etc

But the following are critical for online PR:

• Google and Yahoo alerts
• Web Analytics
• social media monitoring
• SEO rankings and mentions
• inbound links
• pick up on blogs
• pick up on other websites and online publications
• conversions ie downloads of pdfs or white papers, hits on landing pages, newsletter sign ups, twitter followers etc

However remember the golden rule: optimise for your readers (ie people) and only write for SEO secondary. 

The next post will cover optmisation tips for PR writing.

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Writing online press releases is an art. The basic rules of press release writing still apply, yet there is the subtle craft of web writing, SEO optimisation and structure that need to be captured in the online form.

Let’s remind ourselves of the basics. Start global and in subsequent paragraphs move into the specific. A strong headline that grabs the eye and draws interest enough for the reader to continue is a must have. The first paragraph should support the headline, explain it, and outline the entire story. It must paint the ‘big picture’. The structure of the entire release, which is usually no longer than 250 words (perhaps 350 for mainly trade or technical press), should then have a natural flow. A beginning, middle and and ending to some extent and certainly explain the why, what and how of the story.

The subsequent 5 or 6 paragraphs should go increasingly into the specific detail of the story and include any supporting information. The less interesting or supporting detail should be left until the end, but interspered to help bring the story to life the people involved in the story can be quoted to help tell it. The standard tools of editors notes, contacts, supporting information should all be used at the end of the piece, and clearly indicated as such.

Now we come on to the basic rules of web writing. It has to help the eye: readers’ attention spans are shorter on the web (and in general these days), and it is also more difficult for the eye to read on a screen. So remember the following:

Chunky – keep the paragraphs chunky, short and never long. Help the eye flow through the piece and break it up with headers and images for longer pieces

Relevant – know your target audience inside out, picture them (him or her) as you write the release, and use words that talk his language. Make sure that you keep the content, images, timing all relevant for the target audience. It may be that the first para or two need to be tailored or adapted for a different target audience and this is all you need to make it relevant

Accurate – digital communication can encourage sloppiness, SMS is a case in hand. But if you spend time and effort making sure your writing is gramatically and factually correct, with no spelling errors, you will be more successful, credible and believable in what you write

Brief – anything you write for PR, and especially for the web, has more impact with fewer words. Write your release.  Then re-read and edit, re-read and edit, re-read and edit … and then cut out another 10 per cent of words. Then you’ll have perfection!

Scannable – does the copy scan well? Do it draw the eye down and catch and keep attention.  Can someone scan it quickly and get the gist of the story in one scan?  Make sure the answer is yes to all these questions.

 

And now for the grand finale of online release writing. Both the headline and the copy, particulary the first few paragraphs of the body, need to be keyword rich.  This copy needs to include a mix of keyword phrases that people use to search for information on the web.  To achieve this you will need an insight into what words and phrases searchers use to find information on the web. Optimised news will attract more journalists and customers alike.  And research consistently shows that these readers use the web as their preferred medium for finding out news about your clients products and services.

Links are also critical, both to provide helpful insight, information and additional support for your readers and to help with SEO so that your news is easier to find.  Internal and external links are equally as important. As are inbound links from external websites. And this is certainly one reason why having your online media centre on an independent domain – i.e. not a subdomain of your main site – helps with your SEO. So make use of the online release distribution sources such as PR Wire, cisionwire, Response Source etc.

Tags are important considerations but you should only aim for around four per release and they need to be directly relevant to that release, and not a blanket ‘brand name’ repetition. And don’t forget the RSS feed – your releases will need to have their own unique feed if you really want to give journalists the edge in finding your news quickly.  They can subscribe to your feeds via email download, browsers or burn them into their feedreaders to have your news pushed into their inboxes as soon as you issue it. There’s more to writing press releases in the digital age than meets the eye, and its time for PROs to get web savvy.