Topic: Create a Newsletter

I recommend that you create a newsletter and send it out on some periodicity. Maybe weekly, maybe monthly, maybe quarterly. I’d say monthly or weekly is better.

You don’t have to write all of the content in your newsletter. The newsletter can include some photographs, it can include some videos, it can, you can be the curator. And if you’re focused on a given industry niche, you can find articles that you think were interesting or relevant, include them in that,  maybe with a little bit of commentary of your own.

So don’t feel that you need to write the entire thing.

It’s actually pretty boring, I think, to read about case studies. When I get a newsletter from a consulting firm and says, “Here are three case studies on recent work that we did.” I think that’s usually kind of boring.

I’m much more interested to hear that person’s take on what’s going on, or observations on either articles they’ve seen, or observations that came out of work that they’ve done.“We recently worked with a client on this. And here were some interesting observations that you might apply in your work.” So I find those much more helpful.

Even if people don’t open your newsletter every week or every month, the fact that they’re receiving it will remind them that you exist. So it’s effective reminder advertising, even if they don’t open it and read it. And they may get it for a couple of months or a couple of years, and never open them. But then open one of them and you’ve reminded them that you exist, and they reach to you after receiving your newsletter.

You haven’t heard from them, they’re received your newsletter for a couple of years, and all of a sudden they have a need. You’ve been reminding them that you exist, and they reach out to you.

To create one of these newsletters, as I mentioned in the tech section, I recommend getting a subscription and account with either Mailchimp or HubSpot for smaller firms. If your mailing list is less than 2,000 people, then Mailchimp is probably a good solution for you. It’s pretty straightforward and easy to use. 

Setting up the template is a little bit of a challenge, but if you could hire a subcontractor or freelancer to help you design that template; once you have the template design with your color scheme and your logo, it’s really quite straightforward to upload images or to write text, include hyperlinks, and so forth.

And, you’ll actually get some visibility and some analytics on what percent of people are opening it, which specific individuals are opening it, and what they’re clicking on. So if you follow that, you can see what is actually interesting to the recipients of your newsletter.

I recommend not just slamming people on to it without their permission. But, ask people, “Hey, I send out a monthly newsletter. Would you like to be added? I include industry news or my latest thoughts on what’s going on in supply chain or the pet care industry.”

And, people might say, “No.” But ask their permission first just so they feel they’ve opted into it.