E Newsletters - Part 2

In part 1 we looked at e-newsletters and why they were a good idea. Here we are going to take a look at what you can put in them. 

The main reason you will be writing your newsletter is to get people to engage with your firm and hopefully instruct you to do work. However when writing anything for the public, you need to forget about what you want and think about what they want. If readers do not find your newsletter interesting and relevant to them, they will not read it. And it is very easy for them to consign it forever to the spam bin, with just one click of the mouse. 

So what you need to do is give them a bit of what they want, and use this to show of your expertise and advertise your services. By way of example, below is an indication of what I do. My newsletter is on residential landlord and tenant law, and readers are mostly private landlords, letting agents, property investors, and a sprinkling of tenants, lawyers, academics, housing advisors, and anyone else who is interested. 

I start off with a general introduction. This welcomes them to the newsletter and mentions things of particular interest, for example an important legal development which they ought to know about. 

Below this I have an hyperlinked index, so readers can jump down to whatever section of the newsletter interests them most. At the end of every section in the body of the newsletter, is a ‘back to contents’ link, so they can navigate around easily. 

As my newsletter is aimed at private residential landlords and tenants, I start off with a tip for landlords and a tip for tenants. The tips are actually fairly substantial pieces of advice on a specific topic (for example relating to tenancy deposits or possession notices), not just 'one liners'. I know that the tips are popular, as a property journal asked if they could reproduce them, which they regularly do (giving more more exposure!). 

The tips are followed with a short section giving information on where readers can find out more about the subject on my web-site, and/or related legal services I offer. As I ran an online legal information service, I then have a section explaining one aspect of of my service (a different one each month), and how to use it. 

This is followed by a list of new services added to the site in the past month, followed by a list of new topics on my members discussion forum. 

There then follows a series of sections which tend to stay the same, but are put there for reference. For example a list of special offers, details about my books and some of my services, e.g. my repossession service, a list of my speaking engagements, and a few paragraphs which are actually advertising copy which I get paid for. 

Quite some way down (but accessible very quickly via the contents links if readers want to jump down to it) is a news section. This includes new legal developments in the landlord and tenant area, new legal cases, new reports and surveys, and anything else I find which I think will be of interest to my readers. I gather these from rss feeds, articles from the housing section of the excellent Legal Action Magazine, and things discovered from general reading. 

So, to summarise, the newsletter contains two main sections which are of value to readers - the tips and the news. It also contains some other changing sections about my services which they may or may not be interested in, and a number of other sections which tend to stay the same from month to month, which are there by way of reference. Readers can easily avoid reading things they do not want to via the naviagtiaon links, but as they are there, they will often at least glance through them. 

I would suggest you do something similar. Have a certain amount of really useful information which will be the reason why people will want to read the newsletter, some news, which is also really useful and will keep them up to date which they will be grateful for, and also put in information about your services which although they may not read this in detail, will at least be there for inform them about your services, if they want to know (and after reading your newsletter they might do!). 

Mind you I don't claim to have all the answers, this model has worked well for me but you may have a different way of doing things. Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions for doing it differently, or indeed if you just want to comment generally.  

Part 3 in this series will look at ways you can implement all this in practice. Incidentally if you are interested in my newsletter, you can sign up here.

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