Friday, 14 December 2012

Newsletters a pain!


14/12/12

Don’t know about you but I wish every member produced an email newsletter about their business.  Now I hope none of you are thinking “Well I don’t!”  Because you don’t want all that rubbish filling up your email inbox – and if I didn’t ask for it, it’s spam!  Now I am the first to admit that most newsletters leave a great deal to be desired in their content.  However, that’s only because the person concerned doesn’t know how to write a great newsletter (I could give a few pointers there), but their intention for having a newsletter is in fact sound.  Done in the right way newsletters are one of the best ways that there are to market your business.

Now as an Area Director, if all of the members I know produced a newsletter, I guess that I would receive about 200 of the things.  But what does that really mean?  Some might be weekly, some monthly, others twice a year, yet others once a year, and even a few might be just one-offs.  So, what’s that, maybe five a day?

But how about being real for a moment?  You are in a chapter with 35 members of which 25% produce a monthly newsletter.  That’s nine people.  It’s highly unlikely that they would all produce their newsletters on the same day, so let’s say the split is even across the month.  We are now looking at just three newsletters a week dropping into our email boxes.  Now that can’t be too much trouble for anyone!

So, what’s my point?  Why do I wish more members produced a newsletter?

Well, more business of course.  More referrals.  Newsletters are a great way of finding out more stuff about your fellow members.  More about what they do.  How they help people.  The type of business they are looking for.  The history of their company.  What their staff are like.  Their interests.  Why they are so good at what they do.  The more information you learn about your fellow members the easier it is to refer them.

So, if any of your fellow members has a newsletter please subscribe to it; they can almost be as good as a One2One.

A word of warning.  Never unsubscribe to a fellow member's newsletter.  Why?  Well, what are you saying?  I’m not interested in you.  Don’t bother me.  I’ve no intention of buying from you.  I’m too busy to read your news.

It happened to me once.  What did I think?  “So you’re not interested in helping me..”  And guess what, I was no longer interested in helping them.  Might be sad, but it’s true!