Your Email Marketing Agency Needs a Brief – Struggling With What to Include?

Are you putting off your next email newsletter? Has it been a long time since your team hit “send”? And, was your last edition less news and more letter ?

It’s a common occurrence to see motivations wane when the tasks of turning out edition after edition of email newsletter dawn on those responsible. Plus this is especially the case when these publishing tasks are usually appended to rather than instead of other monthly actions.

So to help lighten the load here is a few tips to help those editions remain rolling out.

Firstly keep in check your expectations of how much content you actually require for each newsletter edition. It is better to have three news items of merit then a total of nine with six that are just there to make up the space. As subscribers we all welcome a newsletter that quickly gets to the point while bringing us information we value.

Secondly take a lead from the success of previous email newsletter editions. Most email deployment tools worth their salt will be able to tell you how many subscribers decided to click your links to “read more” on previous articles. Use this information work out what content areas are being well received and then plan out more along the same vein of interest.

Thirdly create some “electronic buckets” to snaffle away prospective newsletter content in as it comes your way during the month. I keep a “read and review” folder in my email folders list so I can copy messages across that are worth using in my next edition. And my web browser has a similar folder where I can store away pages that are worth considering at content creation time.

And finally if all else fails try planning.

Now I know for some this will be the first on the list but for others that are more tactical than strategic a good content plan can help get some direction on what content is worth producing. Take one whiteboard add some chocolate include a jug of strong coffee – let marinate for 30 minutes with a keen crowd and you should turn out a cunning content plan of your own.

In its basic form this will have a content area for each edition and some initial suggestions on who will create what to fill the three spaces on offer.

Have fun and do keep publishing again, it’s not that scary once you get stuck in.