A review of new software products that can make a big difference to your business

Newsletters made easy

By Michael Burns

Electronic newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your customers, prospects and referrals. But there's a technology component that you need to master if you don’t have ready access to an IT department. Once you have the software and have set up the newsletter, it’s easy to change the content every month. Be careful, though: the newsletter should be sent only to those who want it. Otherwise you will be blacklisted by the spam fighters. You need to get permission and make it easy to opt out.

There are many ways to prepare and distribute a newsletter. Here, I will share with you some tricks of the trade. First, maintain a database of contacts in a customer relationship or contact management system. I use ACT! Version 8, which is fine but will require more computing power than previous versions. (I actually needed to upgrade my computer to accommodate Version 8.) CRM or contact management systems allow you not only to store contact information in the database, but also to manage it. You could use something more rudimentary but you will lose out on all the other advantages associated with contact or CRM systems.

Second, you have to develop content. For my monthly newsletter, I use articles I have either written or read. During the month, I save articles about technology, business processes and risk management that I think would be interesting to my contacts.

Third, you need to publish the newsletter. Many companies use Adobe Acrobat to generate a pdf file that can be read by their clients. Recipients of the newsletter just need Adobe Reader, which can be easily downloaded at no charge. Other companies publish their newsletters on the Internet using tools such as Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver. In April 2006, I tried something new — a blog (short for weblog). One big advantage is that a blog is interactive: your readers can post comments. Another advantage: it could attract new prospects to your website. I use blogger.com, which was acquired by Google in 2003. It’s easy to update the blog. The only hard part is incorporating it with the rest of your website to give it the same look and feel. You will most likely need a firm that specializes in developing websites to accomplish this.

Last, you need to distribute the newsletter. There are plenty of alternatives. Your objective should be to personalize it and send it out in bulk (hundreds or thousands at a time). That eliminates Outlook. Many customer relationship management tools include marketing automation, which will allow you to do an e-mail blast. As ACT! does not include marketing automation, I chose GroupMail from Infacta, which works really well for me. I import contacts from ACT! and blast them out with GroupMail. With GroupMail, you can quickly and easily import contacts, send professional messages that are personalized for each of your recipients, and let it run while you are doing something else on your computer. There is a free version of GroupMail that allows you to send to a maximum of 100 users at a time.

My contacts are busy so I try to make it easy for them to scan for anything that might be interesting. I make the e-mail very brief, including only the headings for the articles. Readers can then click to access my blog for the details. The blog contains comments about the article and often my view or opinion. This gives some value added beyond the article itelf. Readers can click again to see the whole article. I also personalize my e-mails, starting with “Hi John,” for example, rather than just “Hi there.” To view an example of my newsletter, check out www.180systems.com/blog/index.php and post a comment on what you think.

Michael Burns, MBA, CA, is president of 180 Systems ( http://www.180systems.com/), which provides independent consulting service, including business process review, business case development and system selection. contact: mburns@180systems.com.