Editing a Business Newsletter

One of the most effective ways to keep in touch with valued customers and clients is the company newsletter. Newsletters come in all shapes and sizes, but the purpose is the same, to inform and engage your audience and potential customers on a personal level. Whether the newsletter is internal for employees only, or for customers, or both, it can be a  great tool to “humanize” your company, put a “face” to your logo and highlight your products.

A newsletter showcases your products and services in the customer’s home, so it needs to reflect the same quality as the products or services you offer. A newsletter is the equivalent of the “door-to door salesman”, but not as intrusive. For both, the trick is first to be invited in, and then be welcomed back again.

Newsletters may be a one-person operation who writes all of the material, or, for larger companies and organizations, by a staff of writers. In either case, someone needs to review and edit the product. It’s like selling a product without “quality control”; the consumer will judge you and your company by the quality of the product, and the newsletter is the product that sells your company.

Quite often, however, smaller companies may only have one person writing, editing and managing the newsletter, most probably the manager/CEO, acting as author, editor and publisher along with their other duties.  CEO’s and professional writers both know that to have a salable product means ‘quality control” over the product. Likewise, newsletters also require some quality control. Both rely on consumer evaluation of the product, and consumer response determines its success.

A company newsletter is as much a reflection of the company as the product it sells, and needs the same rigorous quality evaluation as the products it offers.