Archives for June 2013

This month we have been blessed to welcome aboard two new clients, one of those is Pieter Berkelaar who runs WA Print Works (a commercial print shop out of Albany in WA). Because Pieter has all the facilities to print and distribute his own newsletter each month, we just assist with the writing, design and strategy.

I received a few questions from Pieter the other day about the envelope and thought that the answers would be relevant to anyone, not just for newsletters, but any form of direct mail. So here are the questions and the answers I gave Pieter.

Do you send out newsletters folded in a DL envelope or flat in a C4 size envelope?

We use DL size envelopes and folded the newsletters down to DL, primarily for the cheaper postage rates more than anything else. C4 is perfectly fine also, but it is double the price in postage. You’ll find that if you do decide to use C4 envelopes that they will stand out more in the mailbox and be more likely to be opened and read.

Do you have logos and advertising printed on envelope?

This is a tricky one, and the answer is “sometimes” – We do for special occasions like valentine’s day or Christmas, but usually we use a hand-written font to give it a more anonymous feel to it. If you can make it appear as though it was sent by a friend or grandma then it will get opened with excitement and anticipation as opposed to an envelope with a logo that looks like it could be a bill or advertising.

Would you use barcoding for cheaper postage rates?

We don’t, only because once again it loses the ‘could be from grandma’ effect of the newsletter. – Barcoded newsletters basically scream – “We bulk mail this and you are on a database” where the handwritten with the live stamp is more of “we hand-selected you and here’s a special gift we sent you”.

In all honesty, as absurd as it sounds, we find that these small things actually make a noticeable difference to the readership and responses we get from the readers. Hopefully these few tips shed some light on the best way to use envelopes in your marketing.

For those of you not in the know about Dreamteam and Supercoach AFL/NRL players score points based on their match stats each week. You have a salary cap and trades and the idea is to pick a side to score the highest combined points.

I didn’t get off to the best of starts this year in either AFL competition because the first round fell during the Easter weekend (so while I was away at Bluesfest), it is hard to pick players, go to the beach, sleep in and then go to a music festival all at once. Placeholder players earned a spot in my starting side.

Despite this I am well poised to repeat my achievements from last year – a premiership in both leagues and finish close to the top 10%. It’s looking scratchy at the moment but the pieces will be in place in the next 3 weeks.

This year I sit around the top 2000 in NRL Dreamteam despite not being able to pick half of my players in a police line up. Last year I finished in the top 10% and made a prelim final in NRL Supercoach with the same handicap. (That year I could name 7 NRL players, two were on AFL lists that year).

What I do know is that many ‘coaches’ spend hours poring over data doing calculations and generally letting this hobby ruin the rest of their lives. I am managing my teams with 30 minutes for each of the 4 teams on Friday night and checking the how the team went Monday night.

So How Can I play this game so well, despite the relative lack of time invested?

I have often joked that AFL and NRL Supercoach and Dreamteam have more to do with share trading than the actual sports.

The real answer is simple really: One of the easiest ways to get an edge in your business: Knowing your numbers. Not the simple easy ones that your accountant can tell you in business (or that the Supercoach Dreamteam people give you).

I follow the numbers that really matter. A friend from uni who did some advanced stats courses and I sat down and talked through everything that we ‘really’ needed to know in order to succeed at dreamteam and Supercoach – the list is 4 stats for the year. We need a couple of lists at the start of the year with two pieces of data for each player.

Ben and I figured out the key numbers we needed to know in Newsletter Marketing Systems and we track them relentlessly.

We also help our clients to figure out the handful of key numbers they need to know in their own business before we go and help them. Knowing your numbers makes managing your business much easier and much safer.

If you know what you can realistically afford to spend to acquire a lead or a customer, you have a big edge over your competition that have absolutely no clue whatsoever about these critical numbers.

How you can plan a years worth of newsletter content in just 27 minutes!

One of the most common questions we get asked by our clients is:

“How do we plan our content for the year?”

Answer: There is no magic formula to coming up with content. Sad but true. There are some time test principles to it though.

The best idea is to borrow from Magazine publishers, month in month out they fill magazines with plenty of content. Ever since The Gentlemen’s Magazine started being published in 1731, magazine publishers have been very diligent about coming up with a content plan.

For a newsletter we just need to take their content plan and adapt it slightly, after all, when you are doing a newsletter with us you just need to supply an article not fill a whole magazine.

What we do for our clients is come up with a short list of their products and services and then the associated benefits of those products and services.

That will often give them more than their 12 article topics for the year. Then all that needs to be done is sit down and write them. We also can provide the seed ideas. We have more than 121 different types of article  seed ideas. Which means you can repurpose your content in multiple ways so that your audience reads it over and over – until they get it.

Coming up with content is more to do with planning and then being diligent enough to execute in advance in order to meet deadlines.

As many writers often joke, writing isn’t that hard. You sit down at your computer, open the words processor, slice open your wrist and bleed.

Not really it isn’t that bad.

But if you don’t like writing, you really need a routine and a set time to do it otherwise it never gets done.

Sad that creativity is so mechanical, but it is. That is how we plan our newsletter content and how we recommend our clients plan their newsletter content.

When Ben and I talk to potential clients about the costs associated with doing a newsletter it is often met with dismay. Yes, it is a lot of money.

Neither of us are going to beat around the bush. However at the same time the investment relative to the return is miniscule.

Are you interested in income or equity?

Now Ben and I have actually just gone through annual reviews with our first three clients – all them have had financially positive results. That is, they have made more than they have spent usually in multiples of their investment. With one breaking even. (They work in the slow market of real estate and didn’t send their newsletter to the most likely prospects for them this year.)

So yes, there is a lot of money to spend to do a newsletter but on the income side they are at least as well off directly because of the newsletter.

One client, Cariss Printing have had clients who have been steadily spending less with them over the last 5 years jump in their purchasing from them. Often as much as a 5X jump. The only difference being the client started receiving a print newsletter each month.

What we haven’t yet been able to help our clients measure is the change in equity in their business (and if all we could show after a year of working with them is ‘equity’ then I would see our activity as a failure). That siad The chickens will really come home to roost in the future, when they all decide that it is time to sell up their business. That is when you get paid for the equity you have created.

Customers = Equity

An ongoing purchasing relationship with your clients is often the only form of equity a business can create. Thankfully, it is also the best. Business owners complain bitterly about the good old days when customer loyalty was a given. It is still there, but customers are only loyal to those who deserve it now, it is no longer a given.

These days, you the business owner need to invest in the relationship in order to be rewarded with the loyalty. This equity (in the form of loyalty/retention) changes the value proposition of your business.

No longer when you sell up is your buyer facing the proposition that they are buying some ‘physical stuff’ when they buy your business, they are buying future income from guaranteed and know sources. This is an incredible difference.

There is equity and future income to be had from your existing customers. Think long and hard before you choose to neglect them because it costs ‘too much to retain them.’

It has been a fun 12 months for us here at Newsletter Marketing Systems.

Although we count our anniversary in September when we launched the company for real and all the legal bits and bobs happened and we landed our first newsletter printing client.

We feel our genuine anniversary is when we officially welcomed Bernie Kroczek Real Estate on as our first full service customer, after ourselves. (As they say in software, Bernie beta tested everything for all our other customers. Thankfully most of it already worked and we only had to fine tune a little)

Shortly after Bernie and Gai started with us we landed a couple of other customers too – they seem to come on in bunches. Cariss Printing and Triumphant Property Services all started within a couple weeks of each other.

So we decided it was time to do a review for each of our clients as their 12 month anniversary came up with us.

The good news is all three have decided to keep doing their newsletter which means they will see even better results this year as compared to last year.

Bernie Kroczek real estate started their newsletter specifically to build loyalty amongst its property management clients. Why you ask? Simple when you finally sell a real estate agency the standard valuation is three times the ‘rent roll.’ Or three times what income derived from property management (not sales). So keeping all the current property management clients until Bernie and Gai finally decide to retire is worth a considerable amount of income to them as they work to add more and more property management clients.

To that end we know they haven’t lost any clients yet and that if they add all the people who have brought or sold a house with them over the last 7 years they will probably get a whole lot of sales listings from past clients too (and at a cost much lower than it normally costs to generate a listing).

Cariss Printing have had phenomenal success – how about that? A printing company actually willing to print their own marketing materials… They have had clients come back to them after receiving their newsletter. They have had clients start to order more, and products they have never ordered from them before and finally they have had a new client come on board after receiving their newsletter, whose first order more than paid for their newsletter for the year.

Finally, Triumphant Property Services have had one client return their strata cleaning contract to them, which has more than paid for their years worth of newsletter. The good news has been thick and fast. The most common comment they heard from clients in the past was “if I knew you did x, I would have gotten you to do that.” That has by and large stopped – clients are aware of all of their services now. From the first issue Shannon has been able to generate leads for his other products and services.

Needless to say, we are all pretty excited about how well our newsletters are going for our clients.

The GFC of 2008/9 was actually a recession of trust. There was plenty of money.

Banks didn’t trust the other banks to be good for the loans they wanted to take out. Credit seized, businesses were in turn denied loans, the economy contracted. (Strangely there is more money now than ever before but it is harder to get than it has been for a long time.)

Frankly, this was probably a good thing. There was too much cheap credit out there. Although I didn’t experience it there was once a day when you put on your Sunday best to go and see the bank manager to get a mortgage. You wanted the bank manger to trust you to make getting the loan easier.

I got my first mortgage in the office of a mortgage broker wearing jeans and a t-shirt while the broker enthusiastically offered me far more money than I actually needed to buy my house (I took only what I needed). In various real estate bubbles, banks were willing to loan out over 100% of the valuation.

I doubt I could get the same offer today that I was given 7 years ago. But then again our real estate bubble hasn’t popped yet.

In Australia, we aren’t experiencing a recession but it is not the same at the pre GFC days either. Consumers more and more need to trust the people and the businesses they are buying from. If their wallet stays in their pocket then you are poorer for it.

Trust is important in business because your client’s customers and patients are putting their faith in you to buy. Especially the first time. Think about a chiropractor – you have to trust that the chiropractor will fix ‘what ails ya’ otherwise the money is staying your pocket.

You have to trust that the financial planner you choose will actually make you money in excess of their fees so that you have plenty of money for retirement.

Often it requires a leap of faith on behalf of the customer to experience the results. This is like pre-buyer’s remorse. In her book “Fascinate,” Sally Hogshead talks about how to get better engagement from your clients and how to be more interesting to them.

The one that is most relevant to doing a newsletter is frequency. Simply repeatedly showing up is helps build trust. Now there are high trust media and low trust media. (Blogs and social media are trustworthy in the eyes of just 6% of consumers – 2011 Epsilon Chanel Preference Study)

We marketing people love email because it is free. Your customers know it is free which diminishes its value in their eyes. You send them something in the post – they know you are investing in them and spending money on them. It builds obligation to buy from you.

Getting back to frequency. ‘Just’ showing up regularly helps to foster trust in the eyes of your customers. The sooner they trust you the sooner they are going to buy from you. Take heed, newsletters will increase conversion rate of new customers because it accelerates the rate you can build trust.