The 5 P’s: A Recipe for Excellent E-Newsletters

Premium beer distributor Global Beer Exchange came out with its very first e-newsletter this weekend - check it out at http://cdemails.com/globalbeer - and honestly, I think it’s awesome.  (Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so. Within ONE MINUTE of pressing the SEND button, GBeX Beertender Jim received his first order. And after 5 minutes, he got another inquiry from a restaurant wanting to carry his products. Who knows what else is in store once people come back to the office from the long weekend?)  

So what makes an excellent e-newsletter, you might ask?  I once read that the recipe for great newsletters could be summed up in three P’s:  promise, personality and payoff. I’ll add a couple more -  permission and personalization  - and I think that makes it complete.  

Permission.  It’s really quite simple, and I don’t think I can say it enough.  You shouldn’t be sending a newsletter at all if you don’t have your recipients’ permission.  Without it, you’re just a scumbag spammer, and that just knocks away all the brownie points you could potentially earn. 

Promise. Every newsletter starts with a promise, and this is normally made when you invite people to sign up. What promise did YOU make?  Whatever it might be, bear in mind that this promise is the ONLY reason your subscribers deigned to to trust you with their email address and other details. So breaking that promise could be disastrous.  At best, you’ll lose their interest — at worst, their trust and patronage.

So when crafting your newsletter, ask yourself “What are my readers expecting from me?”  — and be sure to deliver.

Personalization. An excellent newsletter takes into account the little details that subscribers provided upon signup, and makes use of these to create warmer, more relevant content. With the right software and enough details, you can actually make the newsletter you’re sending to a thousand people seem like it was created for just one.  If you don’t have the snazzy software or the extra details, you can at the very least show that you know your subscriber’s name.

Note:  The online version of the GBeX newsletter uses a generic “Dear Friends” - but the actual emails sent to their subscribers were all personalized with the subscribers’ names.

Personality.  This is something that the Global Beer Buzz newsletter had in droves, and that’s why I liked it so much.  Read it (even the fine print) - taking into account it was meant for a beer-drinking audience - and you’ll see what I mean.  

Does your newsletter stand out from the rest of the Inbox crowd — or is it just a different-colored clone of all the others?  If you want your content to be read (and better yet - forwarded) take the time to inject some personality onto the page.

Pay-Off.  A great newsletter makes subscribers feel rewarded for having received it.  The reward doesn’t have to be big or expensive  - it could be as simple as a good laugh, or a feeling of being ’in the know” about things that non-subscribers will never find out. But whatever it is, it matters.  

Give your readers a reason to look forward to receving your email, and you’ll see that any reward you choose to bestow will pay for itself a hundred times over.