by Mark Bloom | Sep 4, 2017 | Content Provider
Attract and Retain Your Newsletter Subscribers
Businesses, agencies and internet marketers are turning to email newsletters to stay top-of-mind with their customers and potential customers. A successful newsletter for business effectively keeps your customers:
- Up-to-date with changes in your industry
- Educated about the products and services you provide
- Aware of your brand’s unique value proposition
A newsletter is a cross between a press release and a blog post: it either announces news or offers informational content your customers can’t get anywhere else. But blog posts are often weekly articles published on your website, and press releases go out to the media only when you have important news to share with your community. A newsletter, on the other hand, is a monthly or quarterly update sent directly to your list.
To Make Your Newsletter Successful
First of all, never waste your customers’ time. Don’t send out a newsletter unless you have something to say — something that’s not: “Here’s what’s on sale this week!!!” You’re sending an email directly to people who already like you. Make sure what you have to say interests them, or they’ll unsubscribe faster than you can say “SEO.”
A successful newsletter appeals to your subscribers right away — so it begins with the subject line. Find a topic your customers want to know more about and entice them with it. Instead of “Our Monthly Newsletter,” get right to the heart of your content:
- Learn How to Write a Successful Newsletter!
- 3 Steps for Adding Value to Your Customers’ Lives
- You Can Sell More with These 5 Easy Steps
Content Is Still King for Successful Newsletters
If you get the topic and the subject line right, your subscribers will at least open your email. Then you must deliver on your promise. Spend time connecting with your audience — which is why you really need to know who they are and what they want. A successful newsletter, delivered consistently, can help you establish trust. To be read, though, your newsletter content has to deliver:
- Useful information — tips or practices that your customers can use right away
- Entertaining stories — impactful tales from your business or industry
- Relevant news — whatever’s happening that your audience may find interesting
Keep your content to a reasonable length. If you send out a newsletter more frequently than once a month, it needs to be very short and to the point. Your subscribers don’t have time for much more than a few paragraphs. If your newsletter is monthly or quarterly, it can be longer, 300 to 500 words. In these cases, though, help readers by placing a list of contents at the top so readers know what to expect.
Formatting Matters
Yes, text size is important so that your newsletter is readable, but make it easy and fun to read. Add photos, graphics, charts and tables whenever possible. They impart information, and they can be fun to scan. Also, make liberal use of bulleted lists and numbered lists. Lists help break up blocks of text and are also easily scannable.
Perhaps the biggest piece of advice, though, is to be sure, beyond any doubt, that your email newsletter template is mobile friendly. More and more, people are checking their email on a mobile device. If your newsletter doesn’t translate well to a smart phone, look for another template. Otherwise, only the minority of readers on a desktop or tablet will read your words.
Wrapping It Up
As Ray Access has reminded you before, your newsletter shouldn’t be a sales pitch. But it’s perfectly acceptable, after you’ve provided something of value, to offer an incentive or special deal. Prove that you value your newsletter readers with a special offer not available anywhere else.
Finally, provide a single call-to-action button or link. If your newsletter is about successful newsletters, for example, offer them a reduced price (say 25 percent off) for one. Get readers to take an action, such as contacting you for the deal. In fact, if you contact us, we’ll make that offer right now! Good luck with your newsletter; remember Ray Access is always here to help.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Aug 22, 2017 | Content Provider
Newsletter Writing Tips You Can Use Right Now
As more and more companies send out newsletters to their customers and potential customers, it becomes increasingly more difficult to stand out from the clutter. Newsletters arrive by email, where they run the risk of:
- Being taken for SPAM
- Being deleted right away
- Never being opened or read
- Being unsubscribed
You need to put care and effort into every newsletter you send out to prevent those negative responses. A sloppy, “Here’s this week’s sale” announcement won’t cut it. Subscribers catch on quickly when month after month, you try to pass off a sale as news. Newsletter writing tips help you engage your audience and hold their attention. Newsletters provide a direct way to connect with your audience — but only if they read them.
The Newsletter Writing Tips You Need
Follow these newsletter writing tips, and you’ll get positive feedback instead of unsubscribe messages. Check these tips against every issue of your newsletter:
- Know your audience. This information is at the core of every successful piece of writing, from a Stephen King novel to your newsletter. You know who your customers are so you can sell your products or services to them; use that same demographic information to write to them.
- Discover what they want. Do your research. Find out who’s subscribed to your newsletter and what they’d like to learn about. Find out what questions they have about your business or industry. Ask them. Poll them. Send surveys. Look at your competitors. Get creative.
- Give your readers something valuable. In other words, don’t try to sell your wares from the get-go. If you’re not providing value to your readers, your readers aren’t going to buy anything, including your free newsletter. Give them something they want, and they’ll pay attention.
- Use intriguing titles. Say what you want to convey, but say it in a way that elicits an emotional reaction. Instead of “Newsletter Writing Tips,” use “15 Newsletter Writing Tips to Make Your Next Newsletter Better!” Make it personal. Make it immediate. Make it relatable.
- Deliver on your promises. Don’t become clickbait; if you promise newsletter writing tips, deliver them. Add value to your readers’ lives, and they’ll become loyal readers who look forward to your next newsletter. Drone on and on about an unrelated topic, and they’ll drop you faster than last week’s gossip column.
- Write like a journalist. This doesn’t mean writing in a dry tone with just the facts. It means use the inverted pyramid style of writing, in which you put the important points of information at the very top of the article. Not everyone will read to the bottom.
- Write with personality. People buy from people and companies they like. Present your likeable self in your newsletters. Yes, be informative, but do it with style. Use the language of your audience, but write it in your own voice.
- Stay on topic. Each newsletter should have a single theme or focus. Write about that and cover it completely. At the same time, keep your newsletters short — as short as 350 words, or the size of a short article. Never exceed 750 words. It’s not a newspaper; it’s a newsletter.
- Always include images. Newsletter writing tips aren’t just about writing. No matter how engaging your writing is, it looks lifeless without images. Photos, graphics, charts and tables can brighten up your newsletter, making it easier on the eye and even more informative, as pictures convey non-verbal meaning.
- Use images that stand out. Be careful of using stock images that everyone’s seen 100 times. Look for images that are different. Maybe develop a standard (such as a tint, crop or shading) that identifies your brand.
- Employ statistics and quotes as needed. Did you know that 60 percent of marketers use newsletters to reach out to their clients? Statistics and quotes lend authority to your subject. Sprinkle them in to strengthen your own points.
- Include links back to your website. Newsletters help you keep in touch with your customers and potential customers, but your website is the online hub of your business. Direct your readers to your website and blog, where they can learn more about your company, your products and your services.
- Don’t link to other websites. Your newsletter is not the place to corroborate your statistics or source your quotes. You don’t want to send your readers to someone else’s website. Keep readers engaged in your newsletter and just link to your own website.
- Include one, and only one, call to action. Like your website, your newsletter shouldn’t be all about you and your company. It should be about your audience — your customers and potential customers. Provide content readers look for and trust, and they’ll turn to you when they’re ready to buy.
- Be sure to spell check. Actually, using spell check isn’t enough. Reread your newsletter, both before and after you’ve formatted it. Double-check everything. Have someone else read it too. Put it aside overnight, and then read it again in the morning. You can’t afford mistakes.
A newsletter only works if you send it out. So, do your best and let it go. Keep refining your formula with every issue — whether that means better targeting, better headlines, better images or better content. The team at Ray Access hopes these newsletter writing tips help you improve your reach and satisfy your customers. If you need help with your newsletter, contact the writing pros at Ray Access.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Elle Ray | Aug 15, 2017 | Content Provider
Email Newsletters Still Deliver the Goods
Everyone wants to be cool, on the cutting edge. It’s in our techie DNA now — no one wants to be seen as old-fashioned, out-of-date or clueless. This is especially true of electronic messaging, whether you use blogs, website content, texts, tweets or shares. Whatever you do, you’ve got to stay one step ahead.
For a number of years in the recent past, the newsletter seemed about as old school as you could get. Newsletters were the big bang of the old school. Before the advent of newspapers, cultures relied on short news blasts to get their information. If you trace their history, you’ll find them all the way back in ancient Rome: Julius Caesar kept his literate loyals abreast of his doctrines through short, one-page newsletters.
From B2B to C2C
Throughout the history of the world, businesses, governments, families and even like-minded friends kept in touch through monthly, quarterly or annual newsletters. People used newsletters to send messages to businesses, employees and customers.
Maybe you haven’t heard much about the staid newsletter of late because of the overpowering presence of social media and its reach. Then again, maybe you’ve noticed your email inbox filling up lately with more and more newsletters. And you’re seeing them from old and new lines of business.
Steady and True
In fact, newsletters have never really gone away. They’ve just taken a back seat to the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. The company newsletter remains a consistent form of communication in large organizations. Newsletters to current clients continue to rank as a top way to keep in touch, as nearly 60 percent of marketers use them, according to one Mail Munch blog post.
There even are some who say that the social media trend may be seeing itself waning. In the February 2017 issue of digital current, writer Michael Brenner reports that, “the honeymoon with social media may be over.” And while your social media accounts may be bustling as usual, they may no longer offer the be-all, end-all for Internet marketing. That may be a good thing — unless you’re a business.
Overwhelming Algorithms
As giants like Facebook and Google continually tweak and alter their algorithms to provide better user experiences and to boost their own profits, it becomes increasingly more difficult for marketers to use the platforms as practical sales techniques without paying for top billing. There is no “beat the system” anymore with SEO, unless you’re willing to pay for it.
And all along, email has been quietly humming along as the truly primary mode of communicating information. When you’re on an email list, no algorithm is going to kick you out; only you can do that. And email is as accessible as your cell phone. A catchy newsletter that comes to you can be a welcomed diversion, while filling you in on recent deals or news that affects you. All you need to do is subscribe to:
- One of your main vendors
- A product you’re interested in
- A company or competitor you want to monitor
- A thought leader you admire
Newsletters Are Here to Stay
So if history is any kind of teacher — as it usually is — marketers and communicators of every ilk will turn back to what’s always worked: the newsletter. It doesn’t have to be long; in fact, shorter emails are better received. To work, newsletters should be between 350 and 750 words, broken up into sections, with headers, graphics, photos and videos embedded to improve their attractiveness.
So stick to your Facebook boosts for recognition and brand identity, but turn to the old-school, reliable newsletter to keep in touch with those important contacts you’ve made on LinkedIn and Snap. Just because it’s old school, doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Jump on the bandwagon — or dare we say retro bandwagon? Turn to newsletters as they make a big comeback in 2017 and beyond. And turn to Ray Access for the quality content you need to engage your audience.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | May 30, 2017 | Content Provider
Write to Connect to Your Readers, Not to Sell
Business writing is rhetorical writing. That’s not a bad thing to admit; if you’re honest, you’ll agree. When you write for your business — or if you’re like Ray Access, when you write for another business — you’re writing to persuade the reader, to change behavior and yes, probably to sell products or services. That’s the point of business.
But it needn’t be that blatant. Businesses exist for many purposes besides sales — although sales do wonders for keeping a business in business. But sales happen when you connect to your readers. If you think about it, you’ll see that some businesses have motives beyond profits:
- Disney, for example, wants to entertain as well as make money.
- Amazon set out to change the way the world shops.
- Ray Access wants to improve the quality of online content everywhere.
Connect to Your Readers and the Rest Follows
The writers and editors of Ray Access are more than just professional writers, they’re professional ghostwriters. That means they have to know who their clients’ readers are. They have to know what their clients’ readers want. And they have to deliver that content in a way that connects with those readers.
Along the way, they’ve picked up a few tips to help you connect to your readers. Here are the top five ways:
- Write to your readers, not at them. When you write, whether it’s a blog post or a website page, use the word “you,” not the word “we.” To connect to your readers, write to them as if you’re talking to them. When you write intelligently, not taking your readers for granted, you connect with them and earn their trust. Once you’ve established that relationship, sales will happen.
- Don’t write about you; write about them. Contrary to what you may think, your website is not about your business; it’s about what your customers (and potential customers) can get from your business. In other words, it’s not about the features your product has, but about the benefits your products deliver. Explain to your readers what they’re buying. Give them reasons to buy. This is the only way to persuade people to buy from you; you have to give them something they need.
- Deliver timely information that’s of value to your readers. Write about what your readers want to know, not what you want to say. The ultimate goal of any blog post is to go viral. The only way to achieve that lofty goal, which is nigh impossible, is to provide the answers to questions people are asking. Why, for example, is it important to engage your audience? Because that’s how you connect with them. That’s how you build trust in what you have to say. That’s how you gain credibility and respect. That’s how, ultimately, you generate sales and lasting customers.
- Give away your expertise. You are the expert in your field. You know more about your business and your industry than your customers and potential customers do. Use your knowledge to your advantage by sharing it. Educate your readers to become better consumers. Give away tips and advice. Provide valuable information, and you gain your readers’ trust, especially if your competitors aren’t sharing. The Internet is a level playing field. Readers can’t tell how big your company is, but they can judge your business based on how helpful you are. That’s what your readers will remember.
- Be entertaining. This may sound superfluous, but it’s absolutely true and the best way to connect to your readers. People do business with companies they like. People like Disney. Consumers trust Amazon. Both companies are entertaining in their own way. If you’re entertaining while delivering valuable content, your content has the chance of going viral, and your readers will remember you when they’re ready to buy. Be entertaining, but know who your readers are. That’s the best defense against going overboard and the best way to determine that you’re hitting the mark.
Connect to your readers, and you’ll connect to future sales. Good luck and remember: if you get stuck, you can connect to experts. We’re just a phone call away.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Apr 4, 2017 | Content Provider
So Your Website Shouldn’t Emulate CNN or Fox
“Focus your message.” That’s what professional writers and newspaper editors tell you. Don’t make your readers work for the message — give it to them straight. When it comes to your business website, the advice is unsurprisingly the same: focus your message.
While main news websites like CNN, Fox News, BBC, and USA Today tell their writers to focus their message, they don’t always follow their same advice when it comes to their websites. Their front pages are a conglomeration of stories that each compete for your eye when you visit. You really need to work to find what’s important to you.
What News Sites Get Right
News organizations are designed to please everyone; they want to satisfy all the demographics with one product. And in their own way, news websites do follow the “focus your message” advice, despite the plethora of competing stories and the mix of ads and editorials:
- News sites effectively compartmentalize departments.
- Large headings draw your eyes to the biggest stories first.
- White space plays a role in guiding your eyes.
- Placement indicates, however subtly, what’s more important.
News websites have to organize their content so you can find the stories you’re looking for. The most important stories are at the top of the page and to the left, delineated by the largest heading. If you want the sports scores, you know to go to the Sports section. And of course, all news sites have a robust search feature.
What News Sites Get Wrong
If you’re used to news websites, you’ve learned how to get around, but to a newbie, the pages are a mishmash of words and pictures. Instead of focusing their message, it seems more like they’re throwing everything on the page to see what sticks. And in a way, that’s exactly what they’re doing — in hopes you’ll find what you’re looking for.
The front page of any news site just seems to keep going and going as you scroll down. One story after another. Videos. Advertisements. Links. Headlines. It can be overwhelming. And most days, the biggest news story isn’t obvious. Readers often give up or give in to the shortcut of the Search field.
Focus Your Message
When you look at your own business website, ask yourself how focused it is. Are you delivering one message or ten? Does your content compete with itself? When you first open your website, where are your eyes drawn?
Your website message should be clear, consistent and focused. Unless you’re trying to offer something for everyone, you can’t afford to throw copy on the wall hoping something sticks. When visitors arrive at your website, they should be able to tell right away what your company does, the benefits your company offers and the reasons to buy from you. Your website content must focus your message, boiling it down to its essence.
The Purpose of Your Home Page
Today’s website designs allow for long pages. With a lengthy home page, you have the space to identify your target audience, answer common questions and explain the advantages of your products or services. You need that space to differentiate your business from your competitors. If you don’t have much content on your home page, apart from photos, you’re missing an opportunity.
Ultimately, your website has a purpose: to generate phone calls and emails from your next customers. If it’s not doing that, then you need to change it. Populate your home page with compelling content. Just don’t mimic a news website. Focus your message.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Jan 31, 2017 | Website Content
Reasons Content Marketing Outperforms SEO
Your website content has to deliver your promise and communicate your value. As more and more people get online to find answers and do their shopping, it’s become increasingly vital that your business be visible, front and center. That’s the business of search engine optimization or SEO. But it’s also why your content is king.
We’ve written about this idea before:
SEO for the Rest of Us
But there’s still more to say. For many business owners, SEO is a “black box” that seems like a marketing necessity, but no one quite knows how it’s supposed to work. Ask five different SEO experts, and you’ll likely get five different versions of the best way to approach SEO for business websites.
Some say backlinks drive ranking. Others say you need long-form content on every web page. Still others swear by keyword research and Google Adwords campaigns. Then there’s the growing reliance on landing pages. While all these strategies play a role in improving your website rank toward that coveted Number One on the First Page listing, they may all fail without website content that converts.
Content Is King Because…
SEO delivers eyeballs to your website. It maximizes your website to attract the people most likely to buy your service or product. It positions your website listing so that more people see it. But it’s your website’s job to convert those visitors into lasting customers. Without useful and persuasive content, your website wastes all the chances that SEO delivers.
Content is king because it prepares your website for all the traffic it sees. When it’s done properly, your website content:
- Communicates your competitive advantage
- Connects with your target audience
- Delivers useful information and answers questions
- Makes your site the “go-to” destination for your industry and location
- Persuades visitors to contact you
Keywords and Content
Keywords do actually work to help people find your website. But once they’re there, reading your content and perusing your pages, the keywords should be virtually invisible. This doesn’t mean hiding your keywords in invisible ink at the bottom of each page — that kind of behavior now gets you punished by search engines, and rightly so.
Keywords need to appear within the content, as part of the content. But if content is king, your keywords are the pawns that shouldn’t knock your readers senseless. In other words, if a visitor to your website notices obvious keywords, you’re overusing them. Subtlety is the champion of effective website content. Ray Access writers shoot for a one percent keyword density and sometimes purposefully under-deliver. A higher density smacks of an advertisement.
Attract, Don’t Repel
For your content to achieve all of the goals listed above, it must speak to your audience and it must deliver value. It can’t do that if it screams out its keywords every chance it gets. Above all, make friends with your audience. Offer your virtual hand and provide something that’s worth the trust you’re asking for.
In other words, provide value to your website visitors. If you can do that, they’ll remember you; they’ll think of you first when they’re ready to buy — or recommend — what you offer. As one content marketing firm once wrote: “To be good at SEO, you need to stop thinking about SEO.” Because content is king, it remains at the top of all online marketing efforts.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
