Email Newsletters: Are your readers seeing what you want them to see?

An email newsletter is a powerful marketing tool, but now that one in five emails is being read on a mobile device, are you sure that your mailing is readable to all your recipients?

• Is the width of your design compatible when it’s viewed on an iPhone?
• What happens to text when it’s displayed on a mobile device – is it still legible?
• Is your template compatible for Outlook 2007 and 2010? (If your email was designed for Outlook 2003, these email clients will handle your email differently). To be certain your recipients see your mailing as you want them to, you need to take these – and many other questions into account when designing your email template.

FREE EMAIL NEWSLETTER TEMPLATE TESTING
Take the acid test: We are offering free HTML email newsletter testing until 31st January 2012. If you would like to know what your email newsletter template looks like on the iPhone, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. we can offer access to a virtual email simulation environment so you can see exactly what your recipients are seeing.

To access this free service, email us a link to the web version of one of your previous email newsletters and we’ll email back a link to you. If you don’t have a web version, you can email the entire HTML for the newsletter and we’ll do the rest - send to contact@deep-mc.co.uk.

Does your business have a communication strategy?

Social media, e-newsletters, blogging; most business owners recognise the value of using these digital communication platforms to engage with customers and clients – even if they may not always fully understand the technology involved. They are instant, powerful and highly cost-effective, so how come – many businesses have yet to utilize these online tools fully? The two reasons most often given are lack of content and lack of time.

In fact, managing and implementing an ongoing communication programme need not – and should not – be an onerous task. Taking a strategic approach and creating a simple internal process will enable you to communicate regularly across all these mediums.

Planning and integrating activity will ensure that;

• Your time and energy is used to maximum effect
• You don’t start out with good intentions only to come to a grinding halt
• You don’t feel like you’ve created an un-manageable monster that is always demanding to be fed

Yes, you will always need good quality content to drive your communication programme, but making ‘smart’ use of content will increase the impact of your activity while taking up less of your time.

Get smart with your content
Content is precious and using it strategically will make it go further. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel by generating completely new content for each medium - use your ‘core’ content to feed all the different platforms. Making your blog the ‘key-stone’ to your communication campaign is probably the most logical route;

• Step 1: Create blog posts on a regular basis
Decide how regularly you are going to upload new posts. Be realistic (see below) and try to keep each post to one discreet topic – doing this will make it much easier to re-utilise.

• Step 2: Extract social media posts from blog post
Doing this will be very straight-forward if you have kept your blog post to a single topic and you should find it relatively easy to extract a good number of posts to use on your preferred social media platform. You will just need to ‘top and tail’ to make them useable.

• Step 3: Use links to blog posts in your e-newsletter
Your e-newsletter will virtually write itself. You will simply need to generate an introductory paragraph or two and then provide shortened URL links to the blogs you want to highlight – with a line to introduce the topic. This way, your readers will be taken straight to the area on your website where your blog sits

Be realistic
Often, when a business makes a start at a communication programme only to have it fizzle out - the reason is an over-ambitious plan. Far better, the set realistic goals which can always be adjusted if it turns out there is more time available.

If you use the model outlined above, the frequency of your blog posts will determine how often you send out social media posts and the length of time between newsletters. A typical example might be;

• Blog post= bi-weekly (generates 20 tweets)
• Tweets = 2 per day
• Newsletter = bi-monthly (links to 4 blog posts)

Plan ahead
While your content will be informed by current topics and there will always be issues you will want to introduce last-minute, having a plan of non time-sensitive topics will make your life a lot easier. Try and plan ahead at least 3 months.

Stick to your schedule
Always keep to the schedule you have set yourself – slippage and erratic frequency will be noticed by your readers. Using tools to automatically schedule in advance means it is possible to make best use of any time you have available and will make it far less likely that you will deviate from your plan.

Writing with my ears

If you asked me which part of my anatomy I rely on most when I am generating copy – you may not expect me to nominate my ears as my most valuable asset (well, after a superbly creative brain of course). Before you begin to think that I may have missed out on a far more lucrative career in the circus, let me clarify right away that I don’t literally write with them. To be honest, while I find they function perfectly well as auditory receptors, they are poorly designed for gripping a pencil or tapping away at a keyboard.

What use are they to me when it comes to writing then? Well, being partially-sighted means that I use text-to-speech software when I work - every keystroke that I input into my PC is converted into an electronic, synthesised voice – so, proof-reading takes place using my ears rather than my eyes. Interestingly, I find that having my copy read back to me this way actually has a number of advantages; not needing to follow the words with my eyes makes maintaining focus a lot easier and while listening to my unpaid assistant - who sounds like a close relative of Professor Stephen Hawking - can occasionally get a little monotonous, it is easy to spot a badly constructed paragraph, or a sentence that doesn’t scan properly.

While spell-checkers are great for highlighting spelling and grammar issues, there is no substitute for having someone else read your copy aloud – as many people as possible in fact. But if you run out of human-beings in the form of colleagues or friends willing to give you their time, you might try switching on the basic text reading technology that most computers have built in.

Has your brand found its voice?....then make sure you protect it!

Has your business found its voice?
....then make sure you protect it!

Think like a big brand
Even for a small business, thinking like a big brand is good practice. You will probably already have established a set of guidelines for your corporate identity – a Design Style Guide that sets out how your brand appears visually; logo use, positioning and size, pantone colour references, font style, spacing, point size for headlines and body copy – that sort of thing (if you haven’t, you certainly should) - but how about how your brand is heard?

Your brand is not just visual, it has a voice too. Whether speaking online or offline, all of your communications will involve the words that need to inform and persuade. Having a Copywriting Style Guide as well as a Design Style Guide for your business will help you to build and develop brand recognition.

Be consistent in your communications
Communicating with your customers or prospects will involve a wide range of touch-points; websites, brochures, marketing collateral, newsletters, sales literature, advertising and signage to name just a few. Maintaining consistency across all of these areas in how your brand speaks as well as how it looks is crucial – it will influence perception and inform actions.

You should think about creating a Copywriting Style Guide for your business now. While it may take a little time and thought, it will save you considerable effort and investment further down the line.

Don’t keep re-inventing the wheel
Whether you draft your own copy or use a professional, it is useful to have a Copywriting Style Guide for your brand. If you do outsource, it will save having to ‘reinvent the wheel’ each time you brief a writer – if you generate your own copy, it will serve as a useful point of reference. The purpose of the guide will be to outline your unique tone, style, language and give examples of usages so that any new copy will match what already exists on your website or in your marketing materials.

Create a Copywriting Style Guide for YOUR business
There is always the option to have a guide professionally drafted for you by a copywriter, but if you have the time, you might want to have a go yourself. Here are some of the basic areas you will need to think about including;

• Objective overview: Each communication will have specific objectives depending on what you want it to achieve (a website, for example might need to convert browsers to buyers) - but there will also be general principles that you will want to apply to all communications. and you should set these out.

• Audience: Your writer will want to know as much as you do about the audience they are writing for. You should include any information that will help them understand the audience profile; gender, age, lifestyle, socio-economic position, what else they may read and any other relevant facts.

• Tone of voice: This area will set out the style of writing and tone to be used including the narrative position which might give instructions such as ‘conversational’, ‘active’, ‘formal’, ‘welcoming’, ‘use first person’, ‘use third person’ and so on.

• Language: It will be important to convey the level of language and how it should be used. Examples of what guidance may be given here might include; ‘write from the reader's perspective’, ‘should be suitable for reading age level of 12 years’, ‘use short and simple sentence structures’ or ‘avoid superlatives and anecdotes’.

• Specific terms used: You will probably have a selection of words, terms, and phrases you use in your particular business sector. Provide your copywriter with a glossary they can reference. You might also have an in-house style for some commonly used words and probably some acronyms you frequently make use of. These preferences will need documenting.

• Examples: Showing examples of work that has been done before - and that you are happy with - will be valuable back-ground reading for your copywriter and will help make the process easier. You should try to include;
o Page structure example - you may have an established format (particularly with a web page layout)
o Headline style example
o Body style example
o Bullet-point example - how, when, what to bullet
Setting out guidelines does not mean that they are fixed in stone; it’s inevitable that things will evolve over time – you may develop a new strapline or there may be a shift in the audience you want to appeal to. Your Copywriting Style Guide can simply be adjusted in line with these developments.

Your brand has a voice – make sure you protect it!

Copywriting for business

Be the Author of Your Own Success!
Get writing for your business

If you own or manage any sort of enterprise, it is unlikely you will be able to avoid having to generate written copy for a business communication at some point or another

Of course, there is always the option to engage a professional copywriter – and when you are under pressure, this can make best sense. But if you do have the time and the inclination, there is nothing to stop you having a go yourself. Even if you do use a professional, getting the first draft down in your own hand - however ‘raw’ - will bring the best results giving the copywriter a real feel for what you want to say and how you think it should be said. Leaving your draft copy to be ‘polished’ will save re-writes and save you money in the long-run.

The write stuff!
Effective business communications are generally a blend of both the spoken and the written word, but while most of us don’t think twice about getting our message across verbally - when we find ourselves having to use the written medium to communicate, it can induce a cold sweat.

Build your confidence and get comfortable with writing however and you will be able to take more control - drafting the words for a website, newsletter, brochure, an advertisement, direct mail piece – or any number of other internal or external business communications.

The fact is that there is unlikely to be anyone else as passionate or enthusiastic as you about your business. You will almost certainly have no qualms about being an ambassador for your company in a face to face situation, so why should it be any different when it comes to promoting your product or service in writing? Why should taking up the pen or pressing digit to keyboard be any more difficult than expressing yourself in the spoken word?

Well, for starters, when writing, we are stripped of many of the tools we rely on in face to face interaction. There is no option to simply depend on a tasteful tie to grab attention, on a charming personality to retain interest or a razor-sharp wit to amuse and entertain.

By its nature, communicating face to face is a two way street, we have the opportunity to read the response of the person we are speaking with, and sense how the conversation is going from the reactions they give, the tone of their voice, their facial expressions and body language. Even on the telephone, we can pick up good or bad vibes to react and adjust accordingly.

Not so in the written medium. But with a little planning, writing for business need not be something to fear.

Just get scribbling - the more you write, the more confident you will become. You are not out to win the Booker Prize here, simply to get your message over effectively. Even rusty spelling or creaky grammar cannot be used as excuses thanks to checker tools on your pc.

Break your writing down into 3 stages;

Stage 1: Prepare & Plan
It sounds obvious, but it is very easy to get carried away and jump right in, putting pen to paper before planning properly. Don’t start worrying about beginning to write until you have an outline plan.

In bullet-point format, set out the key points you want to make and then arrange them in the order you want to make them.

Stage 2: First Draft
A good tip is to put your first draft copy together as you would speak. Don’t worry about the words you are using, the length of your copy or how it may work in the medium you are going to use. Just get it all down. Once you have everything in one place, it will be easy to manipulate and edit.

Stage 3: Edit
Now you can begin to craft and fine tune your message. At this point, you will need to consider the space that you have and the way that your words will be read. The way you structure your copy will depend on the medium you are writing for. Your audience will approach a brochure in a very different way to a website – and an advertisement will be different again. Just put yourself in your readers’ shoes and imagine how they will scan and digest your words.

It really is as easy as that. There are however, a few simple rules to keep in mind as you plan and write;

1. Know your audience
Consider carefully the audience you are communicating with. Think what will make them interested in what you have to say and most importantly – what will make them take the action you want?

2. Set your objective at the outset
Before drafting anything, be clear about your objective. What is it you want to achieve? Try not to mix too many different objectives as this will only confuse your audience.

3. Decide on ‘tone of voice’
The tone of voice you use must reflect the image you want the reader to have of your brand. Depending on what the communication is, you will need to make adjustments. A newsletter or a blog for example, is likely to have a different writing style to a corporate brochure or website.

4. Less words – more impact
Remember, you are not writing a user-manual (unless you are writing a user-manual). Your audience will want to pick out the facts – and quickly. Get to the point and do not lose your key message by burying it in text that is superfluous.

5. Use strong headlines
You will have just a few seconds to get the interest of your audience before they turn the page, click the mouse or crumple and consign to the round filing cabinet under the desk. Headlines are key. Make them punchy and keep them short. Think about a creative, attention-grabbing headline and use a sub-header if you need to be more explicit about content.

6. Call your reader to action
Be sure to state clear calls to action so your reader knows exactly what you want them to do.

7. Proof-read carefully!
Arguably the most important rule of all. It is worth spending time checking any written communication carefully. The consequences of not doing so can range from embarrassing to extremely costly. Circulate it to as many colleagues as possible for comments and approval.

If you would like more information on how to draft powerful and effective copy for your business, contact Deep on 07801 192552 or email contact@deep-mc.co.uk