One of the main goals of newsletters is to inform subscribers of
news and events and urge them to visit your website for more
information. These are essential items in any online promotion
strategy, and you won't find a single major website that doesn't
use this marketing tool to their advantage. Apart from other
important elements that determine the success of a newsletter,
such as the informational value, graphic aspect and user
friendliness, there is another item that many webmasters and
newsletter publishers overlook is the tone of voice of their
newsletter.
Addressing Your Audience
As with any advertising campaign, a newsletter should have a
very clear target. In other words, the person writing the
newsletter should have a precise audience they are writing for.
The writer has to address the needs and expectations of the
target audience. If your public is formed mostly of people new
to the Internet or to any high tech topics you might have, try
to adapt the tone of voice to that. Make sure to place small
explanations of less popular terms, even if you or the writer
know exactly what they mean. Acronyms such as HTML or LCD or any
other "techy" terms should have a parenthesis explaining what
the letters mean.
Adapt your Message to the Readers
The form and content of the newsletter should always be flexible
enough to adapt to your major subscriber group. If you run a
surfing website, try to have a surfer write the newsletter.
Address the surfers in a more relaxed, laid back and engaging
way. You don't have to use the word "dude" but you should avoid
fancy academic terms as well. On the other hand, if you run a
home security agency website for example, you will want your
newsletter messages to inspire confidence and professionalism.
The surfing newsletter should have more photos of surfers and
waves, while the home security one should have less graphics and
more statistics and recent news.
Using a Call to Action Technique
The web is full of calls to action, both in newsletters, web
pages or advertising banners. "Click here" or "follow this link"
are all calls to action - they ask the web surfer to act in a
certain way. Regardless of the nature of your newsletter, a call
to action is essential if you want to drive the subscriber to
visit your website. One common way of convincing eNewsletter
readers to follow a link to your website is to offer them 80% of
the information in the newsletter, and promise them the
remaining 20% on your website. Of course, this has to be a
truthful promise - don't trick anyone in visiting your website
as that will only work once, while your purpose should be to
create a loyal group of subscribers. You can also insert links
throughout the content of the newsletter. However, the most
important place to insert a link is at the very end of the main
text. By the time they reach this area, the readers will already
be curious enough about the subject and they will want to
explore the topic further - give them this chance by directing
them towards your website.
The tone of voice can be considered the "soul" of your
newsletter - it can be the one that makes it unique and
original. The tone of voice can give a new shape to purely
informative content and "brand" it as your own.
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