Focus Your Newsletter On Your Brand
Recently, our blog took a look at the basics of newsletter writing. We covered some material that we’ve stressed time and time again: make sure the content is well written, pay attention to presentation, and tie it into the brand without going by rote. This is part of our message that quality always matters, and that every venture put forward should return to the same basic principles. Building on these lessons, this article highlights specific ways that a newsletter can be turned from a seemingly redundant tangent into a valuable marketing tool that speaks for itself while supporting the organization’s core mission.
The basic function of the newsletter is of course to be informative. Information needs to reach a large number of people, and a newsletter is a great way of making sure people are on the same page. Yes, in theory an email can be CC’d and BCC’d to everyone on the relevant lists, but there is something psychologically distinctive about the release of a physical publication for wide review. The trick then is to make sure the information contained in the letter goes beyond the basics and into actually targeting its audience.
Four Ways to Kill Your Brand
There are no guarantees of success when developing a modern brand. There is no switch that will pour out money, there are no stunts that will automatically create attention, and there is no how-to manual that, if assiduously followed, will assure your brand’s place in the annals of the great Internet legends. Brands are driven as much by the customer as they are by the originator, and the customer doesn’t always want what’s being sold.
That said there are certain behaviors and practices that are guaranteed to kill a brand, virtually without fail. There are always exceptions to the rule, but by and large you can at least count on these ‘do nots’ as fairly ironclad rules. What follows are four ways you can miss the point, and some advice for avoiding them.
