The Ingredients of a Compelling Newsletter

If you’re on one or more online mailing lists, you probably receive periodic e-mail newsletters. You

may also find some of them more inviting than others—because the good ones feature engaging content, are relevant to your life, offer useful advice and information, or a combination of the foregoing. The others likely make their way posthaste to your deleted box.

Read on for practical advice on getting the most out of newsletters, and avoiding the epidemics of non-reading and auto-deletion.

Stay in touch with people on your mailing list. What do current and potential customers want to read about?

If you know any of your customers or clients personally, raise the subject of your business’s newsletter and solicit their opinion. Chances are that if one of more newsletter recipients is keen to hear more about a particular subject, product, or aspect of your business, other people on the mailing list will be interested in the same thing.

Once in a while, it may also be a good idea to include a brief survey in the newsletter, seeking feedback on particular items and articles. The results won’t necessarily illustrate what all of your readers are looking for (since those readers inclined to fill out surveys aren’t necessarily representative of your entire readership), but they should give you a good idea of what’s working and what isn’t.

 

Punchy subject line and title lines.

Seek out the most compelling piece of information from the newsletter to form your e-mail’s subject line. The titles that link to articles in the newsletter also need to be eye-catching in order to entice would-be readers to click on them. Aim for brevity and impact.

Quality content from elsewhere.

No one has a monopoly on good ideas, and in the blogosphere, there is no such thing as a monopoly on quality content. Keep an eye on blogs and news related to your industry, and share posts and information you feel will resonate with your readership and enhance your business’s reputation. If your company enjoys positive press coverage, link to that too. (However, keep descriptions short and avoid penning wordy, self-congratulatory articles. Most people won’t read past the first couple of sentences.)

Mobile compatibility.

The internet is evolving rapidly from a stationary medium to a roving one, and your newsletter must be versatile enough to accommodate the shift. Concentrate on economizing words, and developing content that delivers the core message without undue delay. Break lengthy paragraphs down into brief, digestible segments. Use a large font for titles and sub-headings, and aim to make each less than ten words long, if possible.

Finally, preview your newsletter on a computer and on a mobile device before you disseminate it. Make sure it reads well, and that there is no need to scroll horizontally in order to read all or most of the content in each article. The internet is full of well designed websites and online publications, and horizontal scrolling irritates some people enough that they may be tempted to move on after just a few seconds.

Consistent scheduling.

Choose a time of the month, week, or every two weeks to distribute the newsletter, and stick to it. If the content you offer is worth reading, then the people on the mailing list will look forward to the next issue, and some may even set aside a few minutes to peruse it when it comes out. You can show respect for their time by releasing new editions right on schedule.

Mobile Trends That Affect Small Businesses

A study from AT&T shows how reliant small businesses have become on mobile technology. The 2013 AT&T Small Business Technology Poll mentions that 85 percent of small business employees now use a smartphone to help with their jobs. 

Customers are becoming more mobile too. The International Data Corporation, a global marketing intelligence firm, says the number of smartphones shipped now outpaces the number of other cell phones around the world. Tablets are on the increase with customers too.

Consider these mobile trends that affect small business:

Trend #1: BYOD – Bring your own device

BYOD or bring your own device is a trend that allows employees to use their Smartphones and tablets for business 24/7. According to recent surveys, the numbers of Smartphones sold outpaced the number of PCs. Maybe it's because the newest generation of Smartphones enables users to do everything their laptop does. Companies are utilizing BYOD as a way to increase productivity. For a small business owner, allowing your sales staff to BYOD will encourage them to use that device for all kinds of work-related tasks throughout the day. That's going to be very good for your business.

Trend #2: Mobile Shopping

In the U.S., Cyber Monday sales are quickly building towards outpacing the traditional top selling Black Friday sales and those are only two days out of the year! The vast majority of mobile tech users have made purchases through their phones and pads. It's not just the ease of one-click buying that customers appreciate but also the ability to shop and compare items right in the store. When your mobile application can make that shopping experience easy to navigate then you're going to build a stronger customer base. This means your website should be adapted for mobile phone use. Perhaps you should develop a separate app for your online store. At the very least there should be a lot of testing to work out the potential bugs. You might have only one shot at grabbing a mobile shopper, make sure your website is ready.

Trend #3: LTE – Long Term Evolution

Long Term Evolution networks or LTE are becoming all the rage for many Canadian businesses. These networks are allowing for all types of innovations like HD video conferences, transfer of large data files and hot spot access anywhere in the country. LTE networks allow businesses to make instant uploads across a variety of social media platforms. This insures a greater change of market penetration than ever before.

In the future, smartphones will continue to improve the way you experience the everyday world. Projection technology, for instance, is rapidly getting better, with some phones able to project pictures and high-definition video to a wall the same size of a 50-inch television screen.

Mobile payments using your phone will now become a hot trend, with many businesses vying to create the better “mousetrap”. Technology will always be evolving. With better streaming technology, faster processors, smartphones are becoming more powerful and will become much more integrated into our lives.

How Mobile is Driving e-Commerce in the Future

Back in the sixties, the popular sci-fi series "Star Trek" showed us the way with its handheld communicator. This device allowed crew members to talk with their shipmates at very long distances.

They were also able to use that same device to tap into the vast resources of their super computer. Flash ahead to today and that bit of fantasy has become a reality.

We all have the ability to carry a super computer in the palm of our hands. We can look up information, check out the weather, get directions, stay in touch with friends and go shopping. In fact, mobile technology is going to be a leading factor that will drive e-commerce to further successful heights in the coming year.

Here's why the mobile device is having an impact on e-commerce:

1      Multiple devices and platforms increase brand visibility

Each year cyber shopping is carving out a larger portion of the retail pie with no signs of it letting up. It's not just the cell phone that is driving e-commerce but also the pad or tablet device. With iPad leading the charge shoppers are happy to download apps from their favorite stores and sign up for Twitter promotions and special offers. For the online brand, this means developing a web portal that can cross over on many platforms. You shouldn't limit yourself to just one device and stay competitive.

 

       Easy access for the consumer at all times

A major benefit that mobile users enjoy is the instant access to ordering a product online. Mobile apps have improved so much that they are considered the best friends of today’s users. The apps that are preferred are those that make it easier to find products and services on your cellphone and purchase the products. Consumers can download apps which let them scan bar codes to find the best bargain. If it happens that your website is selling that item at a better price then a few clicks later could have you closing a sale.

      Rising mobile demand

As smartphones are becoming cheaper and more powerful, their adoption is rising. In the US alone, web-enabled smartphone purchases have 46% of the cellphone market. Thus, the market for e-commerce consumers via mobile platforms is ever expanding. With the expansion, there is a logical increase in the use of cellphones for e-commerce.  

Improvements in technology are helping businesses and customers shop and it's only going to get better. Case in point: The Shazam app. Once downloaded, you can activate Shazam to "tag" any song playing on the radio or TV. That song becomes part of a virtual shopping list that is tied directly to iTunes. Hear it, tag it, buy it.

The mobile shopping experience doesn't get any better than that! 

What Google’s Acquisition of Zagat Means for Your Small Business

For months, Google has been telling everyone that local is going to be huge. With that in mind, Google purchased Zagat (a local restaurant review and group deals site) in September 2011. The acquisition helps Google provide some trusted review content and deals for their search users in their local region. By integrating Zagat content into Google search results, they offer a better experience for users, including a great offline presence that they can build off of. But, what does this acquisition mean for your business?

Local marketing is the new space

One thing that Google has noticed is that consumers are looking for search results that are related to their region. So, instead of providing general search results that are not relevant, it’s providing more results related to the city you live in (for example: “electricians in Toronto”). 

This has created a need for small businesses to optimize their website for local searches, targeting prospects for specific keywords related to their expertise and location. With the Google Panda update, search results have become more accurate, where businesses can target their prospects more accurately making SEO extremely important.   

Local reviews have become key to building credibility

Zagat offers small businesses the opportunity to build their credibility through customer reviews. Simply put, the more reviews a business obtains, the higher in the search results that it ranks, resulting in higher visibility.  

With more importance being put in a customer review, small businesses must account for integrating reviews as part of their online search strategy. So what should businesses do to take advantage of the newer local marketing trend? They can do the following:

·         Integrate Google Places page as part of their marketing strategy:  Make sure that you’re listed in Google Places, and are optimized with the proper keywords. 

·         Create a customer review strategy: With the mix of social media and search, businesses must now be hyper-aware of customer reviews in all spots from social media sites to directories. Your strategy must include how to deal with negative reviews.

Is mobile the new battleground?

The acquisition of Zagat has provided a Google a way to provide much deeper results for their Google Places, making them more competitive and providing a better user experience for both business clients and users.  

Most importantly, it has allowed Google to provide a great value for mobile search users through its Android apps and integrate Zagat / Google Places results into Google Map results. The best place for these results would be in mobile search. After all, when you search for a restaurant, don’t you always Google it on your phone before making a choice?