I'm planning an ezine for my customers. To keep them updated, but off course also to keep my name in their heads. What would you consider content of great value for the customers a webdesign company?
I thought abut the following:
-Tips on Google: Find waht you search for
-Tips on browsers
-Tips on Office (Word, Excel, Outlook,...)
-mentioning sites that can improve productivity
-...
It's supposed to be short, weekly, or bi-weekly, but the most important thing is, it should be of great value to them.
First have an ezine which fits your objective. SEO companies can offer Google tips because it's a logical fit for their business.
Next, promote your site. For example have blurbs in the newsletter introducing each article in the ezine ...but then link back to the full article on the site. Have a call to action which promotes your business objective at the end of the article.
Do not have an ezine to just keep your name in the mind of customers. Have a reason to put your name in front of customers, each and every time. The recipients of the ezine should never get the impression the zine is an excuse -- offer genuine value.
What is genuine value? It you couldn't see yourself charging for it, then don't give it out for free. Most people scrape together vacuous bits of non information and annoy their customers.
Thx. Exactly. I don't want to just have an ezine. I want it to be full of value. But it's not that easy to find out what a 'general' customer could benefit from, and serves their business, and promotes mine, at the same time, without looking like I'm just writing one as a commercial.
Then don't write to a general customer. Segment the customer base and provide a column for each segment. Or concentrate on your most lucrative segment alone.
Offline, this is called knowing your customer. Call a few up. Recall your interactions with customers and their concerns. For all the propaganda of social computing, the sheer number of people who think they have 'general' customers is astounding.
FYI, if they haven't bought -- they're not customers. Segment them as well -- suspects, prospects, customers, best customers.
Even customers may not be customers, I also make a distinction between consumers and customers. Consumers buy only due to price. Consumers know the price of everything and the value of nothing (at least within the category). Customers understand what represents value for the money and exhibit loyalty due to these non-price factors.
And each of these value factors can be interesting articles for a newsletter. Specifically because you are educating the customer base about what represents value for the money.
Finally, if they aren't ever going to buy no matter what, then don't concern yourself with what they think. Far too much of the business phobia online involves obsessing over people who will never, under any circumstance, do business with you. Tire-kickers aren't customers ...they don't even make a good impression of being customers.
Newsletters have gotten a very bad reputation for utter, recurring pointlessness. The surest way to become yet another pointless newsletter is to try to be everything to every general customer -- you turn out being nothing to anybody.
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