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I get a lot of calls and emails from small companies (and small marketing departments at bigger companies) seeking help with their e-newsletters. Most of the callers don’t have any kind of email or online newsletter, or even a print newsletter. The questions vary from time to time, but usually people are just looking for some overall guidelines to get them started and keep them going into the foreseeable future.

I’ve received enough of these calls that I think it’s time to create a little series of blog posts to discuss what makes a great e-newsletter. In this first part (I really don’t know how many posts I’ll need to finish, but let’s assume 3-4) I don’t want to get into any technical details of how to send emails, handle bouncebacks, overcome spam filters, and the like. Nor do I want to get into the trappings of sending HTML email (at least not yet) or even good ways to dedup an email list or ensure that you have a good list.

No, the first thing I want to talk about is the single most overlooked part of the e-newsletter equation. This part trips up more companies than you think, as it leads to lots of unsubscribes, angry emails, low conversion rates, and everything else that you normally file under “nightmare”.

This first part of the process, the one thing that will make the rest of your e-newsletter life easier, is very, very simple. So simple, in fact, that it’s a wonder it’s ever overlooked. What is it? RELEVANCE. This 9-letter word, a very important word for any marketing campaign or process, is key to your success. Without relevance, you’re going to send the wrong content to the wrong people, or perhaps the right content to the right people, but at the wrong time of year (or even the wrong part of the day or week). Without relevance, you’re going to have lots of trouble getting people to act on offers or click links to read the rest of the story.

The strict dictionary definition of relevance is “pertinence to the matter at hand.” Ask yourself: of all the myriad marketing messages you receive daily, how many pass this simple test? Not a lot, I’d wager. In fact, think about the ones that you do respond to–were they relevant to you?

Anecdotally, I cite the case of the Ray Sings, Basie Swings CD. I love Ray Charles, and I have an affinity for that old time pre-rock Swing music (a lot of which, with the necessary infusion of blues, country, and boogie woogie, became rock & roll). I first heard about this CD (which is fabulous by the way, a product of technical imagination come to life) while watching TV (or rather, something I’d taped on TiVO).

I usually zip through the commercials, but for some reason, I saw a commercial with Ray Charles in it, and I backed it up to watch. I immediately jumped up, went to my computer, and ordered the CD from Amazon.com. Relevance leading to action.

(My other point is, what were the odds of me seeing that? Slim to none. But I digress.)

Let’s zoom in a bit on the word relevance, and specifically to its etymology. Seems that the word entered the English language in the 1550s, derived from medieval Latin relevant, itself derived from earlier Latin relevare, which, for all you citizens of the Roman Empire, meant “to raise or lift up”. As in, so it can be seen, but I also like the other connotation, of making something important (or up on a pedestal or dais).

With all this in mind, what’s the easiest way to make things relevant? Well, you either have to get everyone on your wavelength (very hard to do) or you have to get on their wavelength (also hard, but at least within the realm of the possible). After all, if you sat down and studied what is on the minds of your customers and prospects, you have some chance of either:

a) Hitting on a topic with wide enough appeal to be relevant to everyone;
b) Hitting on a spectrum of topics that will interest a wide array of people;
c) Segment your messaging in such a way that everyone gets something partly (or mostly) relevant to their situation.

There are probably 5,000,000 articles out there on how to segment, so I won’t get into any of that at the moment. For right now, it doesn’t matter, really, what statistical methods you use to slice and dice your audience. What really matters now is figuring out what conversation is going on inside your customers’ (and prospects’) minds. If you can figure out what’s in their head (and no, I’m not trying to suggest that you become a mind reader) then you can create a relevant message that will have a higher chance of getting their attention.

Let me give you a for instance. Let’s say that you’re a boutique consulting group that only handles certain kinds of work. You do very little marketing at all, and zero advertising. Most of your time is spent working with very large consulting groups, doing specialty jobs that they don’t have the time, energy, expertise, or financial capability to cover. In other words, you’re doing the offbeat, small-fry stuff (at least to them) that they are happy to subcontract to you.

If you were creating an e-newsletter for this business, what do you think would be the most relevant content you could put into it to maximize your success. Would you put in articles about your particular background? Maybe, but its iffy. Would you put in puff pieces that talk about how long you’ve been in business or what your recent accomplishments have been. Maybe, but I wouldn’t spend much time on it.

No, the thing this e-newsletter needs is a shot of relevance. Think to yourself, what is the biggest problem on the minds of your customers and prospects? Well, in this case, its probably, “How in the world am I going to get that part of the project done? Do we know anyone who can do this kind of work?” They’re feeling stress, because they don’t want to endanger the customer relationship (which is probably worth 10x or 20x or 100x the budget of this one little deal) by failing to do the work, screwing up the work, or hiring someone who is unprofessional.

So guess what….your e-newsletter should probably talk about things like:

How to hire a firm that does XYZ
10 things you didn’t know about XYZ that will trip you up
15 ways to succeed with XYZ
3 sure-fire ways to fail when implementing XYZ

Now you’re inserting yourself into the conversation already running in the head of the reader. Now you’re becoming relevant. You’re standing out (or up). Now you’re taking a stand. And guess what, this kind of thinking pays dividends in the rest of your marketing too: your blog, your brochure copy, white papers, you name it.

That’s it for now. In the next part, I’ll talk about the next step: building an editorial calendar.

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