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In the first part of this little series, I talked a bit about the importance of relevance. In that post, I said that one way to focus on relevance for the recipient of an e-newsletter (really, any marketing message) is to think about the conversation going on inside their head and then trying to match that conversation.

It’s an old idea really, one that’s sometimes called “message match” in other contexts (ie, if they click a Google Adword with a certain headline or offer, repeat the headline or offer on the landing page). Others have called this approach “frame of mind” marketing, in which you try to figure out the prospect’s frame of mind before you put together your message.

Still others, like Dan Kennedy, call this the MARKET part of the MARKET-MESSAGE-MEDIA approach…in other words, get to know your market’s needs, desires, fears, hopes, and what have you, and the messaging part becomes really easy. The media buy then becomes a natural outgrowth of the process, instead of the primary focus (which you still see in the industry, sad but true).

In any case, you’ve done your homework and you now know something about your audience and the conversation going on in their head. I’ll continue to use the example from the first part of the series, namely that you’re a consultant who takes on strange or off-beat jobs that the really big consulting firms can’t handle. In other words, you have a vested interest in getting inside the heads of the folks at these big firms and tell them why you’re a good candidate for subcontract work.

You’ve already decided that you need to talk about things that relate to that audience: specifically, your topic(s) of expertise, and how to best hire someone like you. Now, you can come out and say, “Hire me because I’m good!” but that kind of approach hardly ever works. When you think that you’re writing a newsletter that goes out on a regular basis, you start seeing how ridiculous it would be for someone to get this blatant message over and over and over again.

So what you have to do is figure out an editorial calendar. You want to demonstrate your expertise with articles, and you need to hit different angles and aspects of the same topic (your expertise) over the course of a year. So now’s the time to sit down and plan out the year. Take out a desk or wall calendar and go through each month, asking yourself the following questions:

• Is there a special seasonal significance to this month? Are there topics I can cover that relate to the season?
• Are there major events during this month I can tie to?
• Are there special needs in my business that require extra communication during this month?
• Is this month a good time to try different formats, such as a podcast or workshop, that I can promote through the newsletter?

These four questions will get you started (there are many, many others) but let’s drill down a bit, as I already see some of you shaking your heads. Let’s take the first question. I know that many of you aren’t retailers, and you’re thinking to yourself, why should I care about Christmas during November and December?

Well, maybe you don’t, in the traditional sense, but every season brings on its own little challenges. For example, if you were a security consultant, an article or two about identity theft during the holiday season probably wouldn’t go amiss. If you were a bank sending out a newsletter to your accountholders, security reminders about identity theft, phishing, and pharming would be good (not to mention, it’s a good time to remind them of low-interest loans for that new car!).

If its summer, and you’re in the insurance business, perhaps its time to remind folks about the upcoming rains and does everyone have flood insurance? Or coverage against hurricanes if you’re on the Gulf Coast?

But let’s get back to our primary example. If you’re that small consultant taking subcontract work from the big guys, you know something about the cycles in the consulting business. You know that Q1 is generally pretty slow–all you’re doing is trawling for work, writing proposals, and recovering from a crazy December. Come March and April, it’s a different story. Work is in full swing, most of it with a July 4 deadline, and it stays that way until around late June.

Then there’s another break mid-July to mid-August while everyone goes to the beach on vacation. Then in September, things ramp up again for a crazy period that ends right before Christmas.

If you know this rough schedule, then you can rough out an editorial calendar and fill it with reasons to communicate. In other words, you want to have something relevant to say other than that thing that is only relevant to you, which is “do you have any work for me?”

So in Q1, your newsletter would probably have articles in it that talk about how to use someone like you to plan upcoming budgets or projects, or how to run an audit on unsuccessful projects from the year before. In Q2, your newsletter would have content in it that features specific expertise on the kinds of projects you like to take on, such as ecommerce or chemical engineering or translation (whatever).

In Q3, your articles would focus on how to prepare for work-life balance in the upcoming silly season, or how to hire someone who will be able to work well in XYZ environment. You might slip in some information about how something you did last year will make things easier this year too. Finally, your Q4 articles might look ahead a bit to your usually dry Q1, reminding folks that if they still have a budget, pay you now and you’ll do the work in Q1, etc.

Ideally, at the end of the process, you should have 2-3 things to say in each newsletter, along with something special to add. For example, you might include a coupon or a special offer (hire you in December and get 10% off the bill) or an announcement (5% of receipts in May got to Literacy Austin) or maybe just a free report or audio podcast.

Now that you know all this stuff, you can plan for it. You can line up guest speakers (if you’re doing a workshop) or interview the right customers or people, or gather testimonials. You can even take things a step further and theme every edition, tackling a major area of expertise with each issue (or all the issues in a quarter or month).

In the next part, we’ll talk about the next step, which is building trust and validity with each newsletter.

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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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I’ve just created a Squidoo Lens that features the copywriting platform I use to help develop white papers, case studies, and other materials for our clients. Feel free to check it out.

Copywriting Platform

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Check out this excellent video, which recreates a presentation on using social media and other Web 2.0 technologies/techniques to enhance an existing marketing program. There is a slight pitch at the front for Proclaim, but bear with it, it’s worth it.

Storytelling using the New Media

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What is a white paper?

* A pre-sales document

* Targeted at prospects, leads, or other potential customers/partners/vendors who are still trying to decide on an approach, product, service, or idea

* A communication tool used to explain a complex product or service or educate industry customers

IN SHORT: White papers help people make decisions. If you give people a white paper of value, they will give you their loyalty and business.

Most common types:
1. Technology guide — explains underlying technology, why it is valuable to customers, how it is different from and better than others

2. Position paper — explains/advocates a standard, trend, or technology. Explains importance to potential customer.

3. Business benefits — explains why potential customers need/want product/service.

4. Competitive review — positions the product and differentiates it from competitors

5. Evaluation guide — thoroughly explains products features and functionality

6. Planning/implementation/configuration guide — helps customers plan for future trends, or walks them through typical implementation scenarios

7. Case studies — examine the success or failure of particular approaches, options, or technologies

8. ROI — explains the payoff of using an approach, technology, product, or service.

9. Services guide — explains different options available within a range of services

Why write a white paper?
* Educate potential customers and THEREBY ADVANCE THE SALES CYCLE.
* Educate sales force.
* Educate media, partners, vendors, other employees about complex topic.
* As a lead generating fulfillment piece.
* As content for trade publications.
* To redefine the market.
* To build the company’s credibility, authority, or standing in its market or industry.
* To differentiate a company from its competitors

Drivers for Success
* An in-house sponsor
* A real deadline
* A knowledgeable writer who understands, simplifies, and explains the underlying technology
* A topic and approach that is targeted to the right audience (message- and audience-match)
* Customer focus, not product/service focus

Process for Writing a White Paper
1. Analyze and define problem — what’s hindering the sales process?
2. Preliminary needs assessment to clarify TOPIC and AUDIENCE– always from the audience’s perspective!
3. Define specific objectives — are you going to generate leads? what call to action? is it technical or business-oriented?
4. Interview SMEs and read, read, read, read. Presos, reports, user guides, articles, interviews, reviews, competitive docs, pr, news items, blogs, datasheets. If you can, play with the product or watch the service being done first hand.
5. Write the paper — drafting & editing
6. Produce the white paper
7. Distribute the white paper

Structure of a Successful White Paper
* Catchy, meaningful title
* Abstract/executive summary. Can be 3-5 bullet points or a short paragraph.
* Define issue and provide background info
* Introduce problem or challenge. Sets stage for solution.
* Describe the solution. Back it up with evidence (statistics, testimonials, stories, kitchen logic)
* Describe benefits (with proof)
* Conclusion — a quick summary of benefits and reminder of risks of doing nothing
* Call to Action that tells reader to take next step (register at web site, call sales dept, schedule a one-on-one)

Along the way, add illustrations and sidebars that summarize or illustrate. Sidebars can also be used as home for details that might otherwise break up white paper flow. Layout & design can be important considerations. Tone and style of writing also helps–it doesn’t have to be dry & academic. Just don’t get too salesy or fluffy.

Effective Titles
1. Ask a question that relates to the problem
2. Break up title with a colon (Business Intelligence: An Intelligent Move or Not?)
3. Use a specific job title in the title (if you are that focused)
4. Use transactional verbs (Securing your Network blah blah vs. Web Application Security)
5. Use of dramatic title can be supported by a more factual/descriptive subtitle

What to Avoid with Titles
1. Cute titles and/or situational humor
2. Company names, product names, brands
3. Features
4. Confusing or annoying buzzwords
5. Anything downright offensive, illegal, in bad taste, or libelous

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