Recipes for a Hotshot
Newsletter
Tasty content alone
doesn't make a meal
by Meryl K. Evans, Editor, eNewsletter Journal
Many types of cuisine are award winners and require a
variety of special ingredients to be flavorful. It would be easy if one
award-winning recipe existed for all newsletters, but newsletters, too, are as
different as Creole gumbo is from Korean dumplings. One recipe won't do the
trick.
Fortunately, two newsletters can be opposite in every way
possible and yet both be well-savored. By figuring out how to combine the right
ingredients, whether that's by trial and error or through more traditional
methods, your audience will be quite satisfied. Yes, even if your newsletter doesn't
have great original content …
Treasure hunters
How can that be? A superior newsletter without great
content? While it doesn't happen often, such newsletters usually point to great
content instead of create their own. They're treasure hunters. They sift the
crowded Web for a certain spice amidst heaps of home-grown, organic or
manufactured ingredients
This can be a great challenge. Let's just say that it's
easier to find a single green peppercorn among many food groups than it is to
find one within a gazillion pounds of other peppercorns. In the same way, the Web
has endless pages of content and to find the best ones isn't an easy task.
That's where the treasure hunters shine. They save time for their readers and
get them the sharpest resources — not just picking out any ol' resource, but by
finding resources that represent the topic covered in the newsletter.
ResearchBuzz and Librarian's Internet Index (LII)
New This Week are super treasure hunters. Both newsletters are all about
the sites they mention with a summary or commentary for each one. ResearchBuzz
often focuses on Internet research and covers a handful of sites in every issue
while LII lists over 25 Web sites with a paragraph on each. You could also say meryl's notes newsletter
falls here, too. Though it has an editorial and a sprinkling of humor, the bulk
of its content contains links with commentary on each.
A tasty tidbit
Another quality newsletter "food group" is the
tasty tidbit. Each issue typically provides one thing: one article; one
editorial; one discussion. It doesn't sound like much, but these newsletters
usually have an interesting take on that one thing.
Furthermore, the audience appreciates having just a bite of
something to think about. We're an overloaded society and sometimes just one
thing is all we need to be satisfied. Daily
Candy is known for this. Each issue talks about one store and what makes it
so special.
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The Wizard
of Ads sends a weekly memo that usually has one article about 500 to 600
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100% homegrown
These newsletters are workhorses because all of their
content is homemade. Of course, the others work hard, but in a different type
of way. "Homegrown" newsletters have multiple articles in every issue,
covering a specific topic or industry.
Absolute Write does
this on a weekly basis. Every issue contains an editorial, feature articles,
columns, interviews and book reviews. The editor also points to interesting
discussions in the newsletter's forums
— a great way to build and feed its community. The community is so successful
that it published a book to help Hurricane Katrina evacuees with all profits
going to charity. The result: Stories of
Strength and over $3000 in two
months.
Another homegrown newsletter comes from Publicity Hound. With each issue, readers
get an editorial, a timely topic and story ideas, advice on public relations, Help
This Hound, where a reader asks for help, and a dog-related joke.
Smorgasbord
eNewsletter Journal,
Cincom Expert Access
and Shavlik's Remediator Security Digest fall in this category, and use a variety of
food groups. Every issue brings an editorial, an original article, an advice
question and answer, and six "peppercorns" from the world of spices.
These six best of Web articles cover three topics related to email newsletters
and marketing in some way.
The best advice question and answer is a way to involve
readers and give them a chance to share their expertise. Readers provide
wonderful gems and insight that publishers and writers don't consider. Inviting
readers to share shows them they're appreciated. What better way to unite the
publisher and the reader and acknowledge each other's existence?
The right amount of spice
While these food groups are different, they have things in
common: content and readability. The content — whether it's their own or the
links they point to — is of fantastic quality. Not only that, but it serves the
readers exactly what they expect. They ask for a pot of java and get a steaming
cup, not tea or soda.
Readability not only refers to language, but also making the
content easy to scan by using headers, bolding, white space and the right size
font. Two of the example newsletters given are not even HTML-based newsletters.
They do an excellent job in making the most of the text, line breaks, paragraph
breaks and symbols like **** to separate sections.
No one says you have to cook an email newsletter rare, if
you don't like it that way. Go for how you prefer it. Cook it well done or
medium. These examples show newsletters of all kinds succeed by mixing the most
important things: content, readability and topic.
Meryl K. Evans is the content maven
behind this newsletter. She has room on her schedule to take on your content
needs and ensure you get the best results from every carefully selected word.
Check out her blog.
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