Simon Payn's Effective Customer Newsletters

A Big, Juicy Frog, Your Newsletter, and a Happy Day

One of my favorite time management secrets (if it's really a secret) is the concept of "eating the frog".

(Some people say "licking the toad", but I'd be afraid of hallucinating if I did that.)

The concept (promoted by Brian Tracy in his book of the same name) goes like this:

• Identify your biggest, hairiest task - the one that will pay off big time if you get it done. The one that is so big and so important that you've been putting it off for ever. The one that's like a big, ugly frog.
• Put that task at the top of your day's to-do list and then DO IT first thing in the morning, before you do anything else.
• Don't stop until you get that task done.

The amazing thing about it is that it sets you up for a happy day, because once you've accomplished that horrible, big goal, everything else is a bonus.

And the weird thing is, after you have eaten your frog, you continue working and complete a whole bunch of other items is your to-do list in short order.

You feel like you're capable of anything.

The thing is, to many people, their newsletter is that frog.

It's something you know will benefit you in the long term, but you just can't face doing it.

So you need to start work on your newsletter first thing in the morning. (I eat my frogs before breakfast, while still in my nightwear, sometimes even before cleaning my teeth. Yuck, I know, but it works.)

So...eat that frog, send your newsletter out, start getting response from your clients...and feel great for the rest of the day!

[Picture by BaylorBear78]

Permission Marketing and "Too Many Emails"

I got a curious comment yesterday from someone who has been receiving messages from me about marketing by newsletters.

She said I'd talked her out of joining my real estate newsletters program because I'd said that you need permission to send email newsletters to people. That, she said, made her realize that people "don't want too much to read in their email."

This comment illustrates a huge misconception by many people about email marketing: that it's all about pushing your stuff at people.

I'm here to say that the opposite is true.

Instead, successful email marketing - and particularly successful newsletter marketing - is about sharing your information with people who want to hear from you.

Once you start to look at email marketing like that, you realize how wrong this person is - and how much more effective it is if you do it the right way.

Because:

• You get permission because it's bad to spam. It annoys people, it harms your brand, and it will harm your business.
  
• When you get permission you know you are are communicating only with people who want to hear from you.
  
• Instead of pushing your message out to as many people as possible (and so getting a terrible response rate) you are communicating with only the most valuable people (and so getting a much better response rate).
  
• If you are offering real value in your newsletters - useful information that is aimed at the kind of people you want to reach and which doesn't try to sell them stuff all the time - you will encourage plenty of people to give you permission to contact them.
  
• Those people will see your email newsletters as valuable and they'll read them. That solves the problem of "too much email."
  
• By doing all this, you've created a valuable, mutually beneficial relationship, not one based on antagonism.

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How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot During a Recession

Ding! Here comes an email from a client.

"We need to cancel our newsletter membership because business is slow."

Here's the thing (and whack me if it sounds self-serving, because it's not meant to be): Now's not the time to be cutting back on your marketing. It's time to be investing in your marketing - and if can't invest money, then invest time.

This client was paying $44 a month for a service that helped her build long-term relationships with her prospects and clients. Relationships that would be there when times aren't so slow.

But because she's frightened to spend $44 a month because things are slow, she's wrecking her chances of prospering when times are better.

Smarter marketers will eat her lunch.

Am I right? Or am I being too harsh?

[Picture by striatic]

How to Use a Newsletter to Position a Neighborhood Bar as a Community Hub

I was was chatting on Twitter this week about what you would put in neighborhood bar's newsletter.

I said (in 140 characters or less, of course) that it's about positioning the bar as a community hub.

After all, that's the role of many neighborhood bars. They're the place where everyone knows your name.

So that's the role the bar would need to take in its newsletter.

With that in mind, here's some ideas for content:

• Listings of community events
• Stories from the customers
• Stories from the staff
• Local news (because there's unlikely to be a newspaper that local)
• Good news about neighbors doing interesting things
• Sports reports and results
• Listings of local community groups
• Coupons for money off at the bar and at local businesses
• Profiles of local businesses
• Campaigns for local issues
• Profiles of interesting neighbors

What better way to solidify the bar's role as a neighborhood hub than becoming - in many ways - the local community newspaper?

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