How to write online newsletters that make readers visit your website

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Business Writing Tips by Suzan St Maur

PROBLEM:

I want to launch, improve or contribute to an online newsletter. How can I make it as effective as possible?

SOLUTION:

Make sure it’s relevant and that its content is valuable to readers in its own right, without necessarily forcing them to click through to a website.

In much the same way as the paper-based newsletter, the online version will be taken much more seriously by its readers if in addition to the necessary reminders about your products and services, you also include some genuinely useful and interesting information. However the online version, in keeping with most other online descendants of offline media, must be much shorter and far more condensed.

One of the primary uses of e-newsletters is to “drive traffic to the website.” Now in itself this is relatively harmless and provided that everything is done right, it usually works. And then once you’ve got visitors hooked into all your superb content on the website you have a captive audience to whom you can sell your own stuff if it’s a company-only site or your advertisers’ stuff if it’s a more open-ended one. Or at least that’s the theory.

However as you would expect some organizations get this hideously wrong, and in my view the most vivid example of it is the online newsletter that comprises little more than either loads of “clickable” coloured words or else a list of URLs with filepaths the length of a several soccer pitches. Nothing, but nothing is more irritating to someone like me than an enticing e-newsletter with grabby headlines plus a few words leading into the topic and then … nothing. Just a fancy URL which even if you do click on it usually doesn’t connect with the page you want on the website anyway.

If you’re in a position to choose how an online newsletter is put together and you want to get the best possible results from it, please, please remember to put enough into it so there’s something “in it for them.”

Of course if you have a website you’ll want to drive traffic to it. But create a realistic balance – don’t be so naïve as to think you can force people to click on to your website by dangling a carrot just out of their reach. If they’re anything like me they’ll feel resentful and antagonized by it and will resolve never to visit your site even if dragged there by wild horses.

My own personal preference is the standalone variety of online newsletter that makes clicking through to the website merely an optional extra. But I know that in a business context this is not as commercially attractive. So probably the next best thing is online newsletters that supply the audience with a summary or shortened version of the content so they get the key points, and refer them to the website for further details.

That’s an acceptable balance that will encourage people to click through to the site if they have a genuine interest plus the time to spare, and if they haven’t time at least they’ll remember you and your summaries fondly and be more inclined to click through to the site next time.

For more information about Suze and her work have a look at her website here, and also see her latest book, “How To Write Winning Non-fiction.”

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