Newsletters are an essential part of your marketing strategy. They touch everyone who receives them with your brand, adding value, demonstrating knowledge and positioning you as a go-to expert.
Consequently, the benefits of newsletters to you and those who receive them (clients, prospects, and professional connections) mean you should send them as frequently as possible.
Recently, we’ve noticed a problem. Namely, too many advisers and planners seem happy to miss editions of their newsletter.
They’ll send their newsletter on time for a couple of months, send the third month a few days late and then miss the next two months completely.
Surprisingly, the problem isn’t limited to advisers/planners who write and send newsletters themselves. Despite outsourcing the task to us, a small minority of advisers/planners struggle to provide the information or feedback we need (which isn’t much) to get their newsletters out on time.
We understand that life gets in the way and missing an edition of your newsletter might seem like an easy way to claw back some time. But, if you do, it’ll damage your reputation.
So, here are five reasons why you should never miss a newsletter deadline.
1. You will add less value
As we said, your newsletter should add value, demonstrate knowledge and, in the case of prospects and professional connections, position you as a go-to expert.
Simply put, if you miss editions and deadlines, you reduce the number of opportunities to do all of those.
It’s the same logic that applies to the frequency with which you send newsletters. Send monthly instead of quarterly and you will add more value. Send regularly, without missing editions and, again, you will add more value.
As an aside, we know that some advisers/planners believe a monthly newsletter is “overkill” or will “bombard” their clients.
All the evidence we see points to the opposite, as open rates, click-through rates and unsubscribes are almost identical for monthly and quarterly newsletters. So, sending 12 times a year, instead of four, has significant upsides and no downsides.
2. You look inconsistent
If you send your newsletter at the same time each week/month you will build up a pattern of consistency, which instils a sense of confidence and reliability in those who receive it.
The opposite is also true. Sending newsletters sporadically makes you look unreliable and disorganised. We know of advisers/planners who have had to deal with upset clients calling them and asking where their newsletter is when it’s sent late.
In an ideal world, you will be so consistent that people come to anticipate your newsletter arriving on a given day. That’s why we always send ours on a Friday at 7.30 am. We didn’t even miss an edition on Good Friday earlier in the month.
3. Your website won’t be updated
Your newsletter should include links to blogs that are hosted on your website (remember, newsletters should never be sent as a PDF).
Missing an edition of your newsletter means your website won’t be updated. So, people who visit the page will see that you publish blogs inconsistently and will draw their own conclusions. You’ll likely have visited a company’s website, seen they haven’t updated their news for three months and thought less of them.
Of course, the opposite is true. If someone sees that your blog is regularly updated, they will feel reassured by your consistency.
4. Prospects will be nurtured less effectively
As we’ve written about before, most advisers/planners convert between 25% and 40% of all new enquiries. Consequently, there are many prospects that don’t immediately convert into clients, but whom you would like to work with.
To convert these prospects into clients you need to position yourself as the go-back-to adviser/planner. How do you do that? By adding value and demonstrating knowledge. But you knew that by now!
So, if you miss editions of your newsletter, not only will you do both of those less frequently, but you will also look inconsistent.
5. Professional connections will hear from other people
If developing relationships with solicitors and accountants is important to you, sending newsletters with content written specifically for them is essential.
If you miss editions, you will create a void that other advisers/planners who are more consistent will fill.
5 top tips to make sure you don’t miss deadlines
1. Find a way to enjoy the writing process
If you don’t enjoy writing, you will never develop the consistency you need. There will always be something more important or interesting to do. Instead, you should simply take the easier option of outsourcing your newsletter production.
2. Find the best place and time to write, and stick to it
For me, it’s a Saturday morning in my favourite coffee shop or Wednesday evening in the office with the Boss turned up loud. You’re more likely to be consistent if you find the time and place that works for you.
3. Remember that no one expects you to be perfect
We’ve seen advisers and planners spend days, even weeks, making tiny (and frankly inconsequential tweaks) to articles in the quest for perfection.
The result? Another newsletter deadline passes by with the articles saved as drafts.
Instead, accept that no article will ever be perfect and that good and done is good enough.
4. Divide and conquer
Here at The Yardstick Agency, we publish three blogs each week – on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
There’s no way I could write that amount of content (and frankly no one wants to hear from me three times a week!) So, we have a rota with each team member contributing one blog approximately every three months.
If you have other members of your team who are keen to write, this could be the perfect solution for you. It takes careful management, and you need to give them enough time to write their articles. They need to be 100% committed too, but it works for us and could do for you.
5. Outsource the job
If you can’t guarantee that you and your team are capable of producing blogs and newsletters regularly the obvious solution is to outsource the production.
Outsourcing still needs input from you, but it will save a huge amount of time. Plus, you could argue it will save money because your hourly rate is significantly higher than that of a content writer.
High-quality content, delivered consistently
Our content team comprises:
- 11 personal finance copywriters
- 2 proofreaders
- 4 content delivery assistants (who build and send the newsletters).
They have one job each month; to ensure that they deliver high-quality content on time for the advisers/planners we work with.
If you’d like to learn more about our newsletter packages (which we call Yardstick Membership) please call us on 0115 8965 300 or click here and we’ll get in touch.
