Being a founder
Being a founder 5 - Importance of the newsletter
Just a quick one to talk about why you should set up an email newsletter system–and how to use it effectively.
Why
A newsletter is your way to broadcast a message about your product or service to a crowd that has already identified themselves as interested parties. There are three primary reasons to REGULARLY send a newsletter to them:
- Provide useful information or interesting ideas for people to chew on. The best way to be relevant is to be useful.
- If you are useful enough, that will spread by word of mouth.
- Keep your product/service in their minds. Coke doesn’t advertise so they can attract new customers; they advertise to keep existing ones.
How
Keep them short and focused on one point. Long, rambling newsletters are seldom read. Plus, if you put too much into one newsletter, you’ll have fewer opportunities to send more of them. (See point three above.)
Make them compelling by telling a story that makes the reader a character in that story. I recently wrote a newsletter titled “The CLARITY machine.” It drew a comparison about how Intermz.com is like the machine ophthalmologists use sharpen your vision and make the world more clear. It put the reader in the ophthalmologist’s seat by reminding them of the time when the doctor would ask, “Which is better, A or B?” Then it drove the point home that Intermz does the same thing for your learning; you can switch between lenzes until your topic of interest becomes clear.
You can read the whole newsletter at:
http://www.intermz.com/blog/2008/08/16/the-clarity-machine/
When
As regularly as you can. Humans are wired to look for patterns, and when they see one, they lock into it so they can anticipate what will happen next. We are actually pattern recognition machines. If you give them the “next,” which is the next newsletter, it will reinforce your presence in their minds. This all sounds very pop psychology, but it’s true. Repitition is the key to remembering. (Of course, Intermz is the key to learning 
Good luck and go get ‘em.
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Discussion
2 comments for “Being a founder 5 - Importance of the newsletter”
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Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson
Thank you, Matt! I added your blog to my Google Reader as well.
Do you have any advice on doing a fliers campaign?
We are getting ready to plaster downtown Ann Arbor with fliers to catch the incoming wave of students coming back from summer vacation. We want to encourage them to sign up for our newsletter and private beta. We’ve identified students as our primary target audience because our site is a learning tool.