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How to Stop Competitors Stealing your Customers

How often do you contact your customers? Do you keep in touch with them regularly?
Do you remind them of your products or services, tell them about your special offers or keep them up to date with your news? Or not?

If you don't keep your name in front of your customers, beware: someone else could catch their attention and take their business.

If you don't want your customers to forget about you, you must keep in touch with them. But how? Postal mailings are expensive; telephone calls are not always well received. So you need something that is inexpensive, unobtrusive and straightforward. The solution?

E-newsletters.

E-mail newsletters allow you to keep in touch with your customers directly, without the costs involved in postal mailings. And providing you follow a few simple rules, you could reap a whole host of benefits from an e-newsletter campaign.

Rule One: Keep it regular

If you are going to send a newsletter, send it on a regular basis. Whether this is weekly, fortnightly, monthly or quarterly, it has to be consistent otherwise your recipients won't take you seriously. Plan ahead so that you are ready with the newsletter content in advance; don't make it a rush job! It has to be interesting reading.

Rule Two: If you are Short on Time - Keep it Short

The first issue of your e-newsletter can by all means be filled lots of information about your company and services. However, you don't need to repeat this in every issue. Don't forget that recipients will be short on time - this is the way life is today - so by keeping your content short and to the point, you will be doing your readers a favour.

Rule Three: Brief intros - not reams of content

Long reams of text don't lend themselves to wanting to be read. Having to work your way through lots of content to find the parts that may interest you will just be a put-off. Better to break the newsletter down into sections with short introductions - very tempting introductions- and perhaps an image, that will attract attention from the right people who will then click on 'read more' to learn more about their chosen topic of interest. And don't forget to link the stories to relevant pages of your website!

Rule Four: Keep it topical

Newsletters that tie in with seasonal happenings - such as Christmas for example - will always be better read because they cover just what is on readers' minds at the time. If it's Fathers' Day, Mothers' Day, Valentines Day or if there is a national campaign going on at the time, tailor your newsletter to the event. Come up with a special offer that works with what is going on and your news will sink in far more effectively. And if you have an event coming up or have recently won an award, use your newsletter to publicise this news. The newsletter can also be used as an event invitation or reminder.

Rule Five: Brand it

Probably the most important rule is to ensure your newsletter is clearly branded and matches the design of your website. It must be viewed as an extension of your overall marketing campaign!

And finally, the best piece of advice we can give you is to use an email service provider to send your e-mail newsletters. Why? Because they allow you to create your newsletters, within the parameters of your branding, quickly and easily. They also provide you with managed campaigns that provide statistics showing you how many of your newsletters were opened and how many recipients clicked through to your website, amongst other things.

Keep in touch with your customers - and don't let your competitors steal them from you! Core Media Design offers a flexible, comprehensive e-mail newsletter programme that gets results. Get in touch today to discuss your specific needs.