Michael Katz's E-Newsletter On E-Newsletters
March 31, 2006
Issue #149
I Walk The Line
It all began innocently enough. My brother-in-law Holly was over at the house a couple of Sundays ago, when he overheard my wife Linda talking about how much she hated
the flowered wallpaper border in our family room – something we inherited when we bought the house four years ago.
Holly pointed out how easy it would be to just pull the whole thing off. Sure enough, the next thing I knew, my entire family was tugging on flowered wallpaper from all
directions.
Personally, I had no objection to the death of the flowered wallpaper. Not because I hated it, but because in four years of living here, Iím pretty sure I never noticed it.
What I did notice however – now that the border was gone – was a distinct, six inch wide, seven feet up, white stripe circumnavigating the room; a design feature which had
apparently been hiding underneath all these years.
Again, not a huge problem. It simply meant that someone (by which I mean, me) would have to repaint the room one of these days.
"Not so fast, Daddy," came a voice from about chest level. It belonged to my daughter Emily.
She went on to inform me that her 10th birthday party (with sleepover) was scheduled for that coming Friday night. And, she added, "there is no way on Godís green earth
that my friends and I are going to celebrate my 10th birthday (with sleepover) while sitting in a room surrounded by a big, ugly, white, who-snatched-the-wallpaper stripe."
OK, I may have embellished Emilyís quote a bit, but you get the idea. To preserve family harmony, that room needed to be painted and put back together before Friday
night.
And so I did. And so it was.
But hereís why I mention all this. Were it not for the deadline, you and anyone else who walked into that family room would have been staring at a big white stripe for a long
time to come. It was only because of the Emily line in the sand that I got it done.
Your E-Newsletter needs a deadline too. Because when it comes to listing the top five reasons why E-Newsletters fail, the first three are not publishing, not publishing and
not publishing. In other words, none of the things we talk about here every other week work if you donít get the thing out the door, month after month after month.
The problem you face is that unlike so much of what you deal with every day in your business life, your E-Newsletter will never be on fire. It can always be pushed back one
more day, or "until things settle down around here," or until who knows when. And before you know it, your monthly newsletter is monthly in name only.
Two suggestions for staying on track:
-
Pick a monthly publication day. First Tuesday, third Thursday, whatever you like. It doesnít matter really, so long as you commit to it and treat it like a real deadline.
- Tell everybody what your publication day is. Mention it in your sign-up welcome letter, put it on your web site (you can see what I do here), shout it from the rooftops. The idea is to paint yourself into a corner – to create a situation for yourself where
not publishing on time is embarrassing and uncomfortable. That way, maybe youíll keep doing it.
Bottom Line. One of the things I love about E-Newsletters is that thereís no such thing as an "E-Newsletter Emergency." If somethingís not quite right, you can always put
off publication for one more day.
The flip side however, is that this lack of urgency often results in E-Newsletters being moved to the back burner, a place where they languish until, like so many other
ambitious marketing efforts, theyíre quietly forgotten.
If you want the business building results that this magnificent tool has to offer, youíve got to make a commitment and stick to it. Emily and I will be watching.
We've Got Mail
Our last newsletter – The Road(s) to Success – resulted in a ton of reader e-mail (thank you).
This one from long time reader Ben Utley, a Certified Financial Planner serving the state of Oregon, was a nice
example:
"I challenge you to define- in financial, physical, emotional, and spiritual
terms- exactly what ësuccessí is to you in specific, measurable actionable
ways, and I further challenge you to describe how you would/will (no doubt)
feel once you have actually achieved ësuccess.í
"Mentally seat your self on the throne of success, and then answer the question,
íNow what?í"
Thanks Ben, and thanks to everyone else who took the time to write!
About Blue Penguin Development, Inc.
Blue Penguin Development helps professional service firms get clients,
by showing them how to strengthen relationships with the people they already know.
I specialize in the development of electronic newsletters.
Click here for an overview of my services.
|
