General
Before we talk about the contents of the newsletter, let’s set some basic general “rules”.

Sender
Make sure the sender name is the name of your company and not the name of the person sending the email. This way the receiver has a clear idea of the source of the email.

Lots of newsletters are sent from an email address that is not read or doesn’t even exist. Make sure your mail clearly states that using the reply-button won’t work. Be sure to offer your readers an alternative address to send their questions and comments to.

Unsubscribing made easy
Make sure your email newsletter contains an unsubscribe link. Don’t make it hard for people to unsubscribe. Unsubscribing from your newsletter, doesn’t mean losing them as a customer of visitor. Being too pushy may accomplish that though.  Remember that anybody who really wants to unsubscribe will find a way to do so. Frustrating them in what they want won’t make their experience with your company any more positive.

HTML or Text
If you’re sending out an HTML newsletter, make sure there’s also a plain text version available for people who can’t read HTML formatted emails. Also, some spam filers will stop HTML emails.

Images
Newsletters should be well designed and please the eye. But, never – never ever ever? – ever make a newsletter from just an image. These types of newsletters are usually not very clickable (the 1 image is the link) which is highly annoying. Do use images as a part of your HTML version. But test these images. Be sure to test your newsletter anyway. I have received many a newsletter that didn´t actually work – especially the images.

Content
Content is still the most important part of any newsletter. What your content is, is up to you to decide. But here are some pointers to help you along.

Subject
The title “monthly newsletter” doesn’t seduce your readers into clicking. Remember: people’s mailboxes these days are filled with content. When scanning their mailbox, your readers are looking for a reason not to click delete. A good subject for your mail will maximize the chance of them opening your mail to begin with.

Companies that take newsletters seriously use software to test different subjects. This type of software doesn’t just test by how many people an email was opened, but also which links within the email were clicked.

Just like with websites, it is possible to a/b test emails: send one version to one group of recipients and another version to another group. This way you can improve your clickthrough rate by learning what does and what doesn’t work.

Valuable content
The goal of your newsletter is usually to get people to visit your website. Just putting links in your newsletter won’t get you there though. Make your newsletter valuable in itself, in addition to the links that you provide to your website. One way to do this is by putting a full article (about a subject which is interesting to your readers) in the newsletter in and then maybe just intros other articles and a read more link. By putting full content in your newsletter, you can interest your readers in the newsletter itself, while the intros will get them to your website.

Call-to-action
Make sure your newsletter contains a clear call-to-action. Do you want your readers to buy something, read something, apply for something, do something? Make sure they know what is expected from them.

KISS – Keep it simple/short silly/stupid/shmuck
Keep it short. Really long newsletters really won’t be read.  It’s better to send shorter newsletters, more frequently than long epistles once a year.

The huge amount of mail that people receive forces them to not only scan content when visiting websites, but also when reading emails. Make your mail easy to scan, by putting an index at the top, by using subheadings and breaking the texts with images and some whitespaces.

Lingo
You may be a specialist at your trade, but your customers oftentimes aren’t. Make sure you know who they are and how they communicate. Make sure you speak their language.

What not to do
There are some things that you should never do. Pay attention, here they come:

Don’t disguise your sale as a newsletter. Sending an ad is fine, as long as people know that’s what they’re getting.

Never send people your newsletter without their permission. Your newsletter is there to build a relationship. Spamming won’t do that for you. Don’t be seduced into adding everybody whose business card you have or who’s entered into a contest at your site or who’s ordered something from you to your mailinglist. The only people who should receive your newsletter are the people who specifically requested to.

Don’t ever put all the addresses of the recipients into the To or CC-field of your email. Use the BCC-field if you don’t own special newsletter software. This seems obvious, but if I had a euro for every time that I received the email addresses of strangers in the To field of a newsletter – I’d be a very rich woman.

Do you have any tips & tricks for making  good newsletters? Please share yours in the comments!

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The term is usually surfaces as a contradiction. A marketeer is interested in sales targets. While I feel quality is our target. The webanalytics specialist keeps talking about conversions (meaning sales for most webanalists). I keep going on about this quality issue of mine. They seem to be opposite points of view. There is debate. Frustration on my end. A deadlock all around.

Confusion
In the mean time I started to suspect that there was actually no contradiction in our debate. No debate even. The problem was a matter of semantics. A problem which by the way confused both sides. Those who felt “my” quality was too expensive and cost them sales. But I was confused as well, thinking they wanted to reach their targets at quality’s expense.

Goals and such
In one of these debates someone stated: “reaching our website objectives can be done in many different ways. Usability or webanalytics but quality can also be one of the ways to reach our goals.” This got me thinking. Something in his story just didn’t sit right with me. It took me a while to figure it out, but then I did: webanalytics is not an angle to reach a goal. Webanalytics is a means of measuring. Quality however is a goal. More than that, it’s the central goal. Because really, doesn’t quality simply mean the point where everyone’s goals are reached to their fullest extent? Both visitor’s and publisher’s?

So to recap: what is quality? Quality is the theoretical point between customer goals on the one side and company goals on the other. Interaction design, W3c guidelines, IT infrastructure, content are all ways of reaching this point (on a website at least) and web analytics, usability testing, content quality testing etc. are all means of measuring how close to quality you are. All test results should be invested into the theoretical Q-point. Which means that all choices that are made after testing should serve both customer and company goals just as much. Adding to one, takes away from the other.

The focus of most marketeers however is on the company’s goals. The focus for most specialists is the customer’s goals. The trick is to find the middle together.

In my experience test results from any type of test are used to get closer to the company’s goals, thus taking away from the customer. This is a short term way of thinking. When the customer doesn’t feel his needs are met, he will take his business elsewhere. The q-model can help you find the middle. It doesn’t do much except tell you what place within the whole process the different items have (web analytics is not a goal, it is a measuring tool and should be used as such, visual design is a means and should be used as such). And it tells you what to strive for and by which means to do this and how to measure.

Oh well, it’s just a thought. Who know, maybe someone will find it useful.

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1. How will Twitter come up with better results?
2. How can Twitter make money from their (free to use) application?

In this article I will share my thoughts on this subject, by giving you some possibilities for Twitter Search and a way a to make money. And yeah, it’s not that difficult.

What the Twitter?
Most people use Twitter to share whatever it is they choose to share. Most people who use Twitter want to interact with other people on Twitter, so a discussion / conversation is built. Often this is done by asking and answering questions. These questions and answers are connected, because users of Twitters reply to each other (@reinoutw for instance). When somebody replies to a Tweet, the reply is connected to this Tweet. Sometimes, a question or answer is accompanied by a URL. This is usedto enrich or explain the answer. All this makes Twitter a real Q&A machine!

Natural Language Twitter Search
The coolest thing about this Q&A machine is that it’s written by people; human beings! The questions are written in the natural language of the crowd and so are the answers. So, when somebody asks a question, this question can be found in the Q&A database of Twitter. But the biggest beauty is that the answer is also found in the same database.

So, when somebody asks a question, a natural language tool can read this question. By comparing this question with all the questions in the database a similar question can be found, after that, the question and the answer can be shown to the person posing the question.

The advantage of this Q&A system of Twitter is the matter in which people ask and answee questions. Up till now, serach engines try to find an answer to your question. As oposed to find a question accompanied by an answer. Twitter solves this problem because there are questions, answers and web pages connected to each other. Really interesting content!

Making Money

Now on tpo the second question surrounding Twitter. How to make money from this free service? We are familiar with Google Adwords, the sponsored results in Google. Twitter can introduce sponsored Tweets. Tweets by for instance manufactures who give answers to questions about their products and appear at the top of the ‘organic’ Tweets. These Q&A’s can be built easily even before anyone asks a particular question. Manufacturers can also collect all the questions (and his answers) and be given a more prominent place in the search results (by using visual markers instead of calling them sponsored results) . This is a plus for the the person searching (better answers), for the manufacturer (direct contact, in control of the answer) and for Twitter (making money).

Looks good to me, who will help me build this excellent tool?

Related posts:

1. Your onsite search engine – a treasure cove

Requirements – template
Experts often think that the work they do is much more important and intelligent than the work that you do. After all, they know everything about [insert subject here] and all you do is write cute little texts. When you ask them for input, they see your request as a bothersome side issue. They may send you vast documents filled with jargon and such. Or they get you to come to them so they can tell you all about their expertise. Now if you’re like me, you don’t have time for such endless meetings designed to make you do all the work. And apart from it being rather annoying when they try to get out from under what is really their job, it also doesn’t much help the quality of the work you have to deliver.

When writing for websites you need very specific information, written in a very specific manner. In order to get the right information and help the specialists give it to you, it’s a good idea to develop a template that they can fill in. of course you may still have questions after they’ve filled in the template and answered your primary questions. But your startingpoint will be much better since you have now helped yourself gain some control through the template.

Requirements – checklists
If you work in a larger company people might not know exactly what it is you do. Not everyone knows what web content is. Or the difference between a web editor and a web content manager. They also may not know what it is you need from them in order to do your job or comply with their request concerning the website. Help them out by making a checklist for them. You can put things on it like specs for images that can be used on the website or tips on what to do in case they need a new URL, or want to launch a new product. Try to put the stuff on there that you can do for them and what you need from them in order to do it.

Coordination
If you work for one of those older larger companies, chances are that more than one party needs to review your texts. People from communications, product managers, legal and maybe more (where I work 5 different departments look at our texts). Make sure you are never responsible for the reviewing process. This may seem unnatural, but try not to take your texts from one department to the next.

First of all you are very likely to get mixed up in office polictics that you know nothing about. Legal may have a long standing argument with marketing or communications may dislike the people from legal. Secondly as you are not the person who knows the subject-matter, it is impossible for you to establish wether any remarks concerning the specific subject are correct. Going from department to department will get you mixed up in discussions about the subject matter. Discussions you will always lose!

Establish which of the parties is closest to you and knows enough about the subject matter. Where I work this is the marketing department.   Make them responsible for the review process. Do this in 3 ways:

1. Have them supply all the above mentioned template with all the information you need to write the basic texts.
2. Have them make sure all the parties agree on the contents of the template
3. Have them make sure that all parties involved agree on the remarks they make on your first draft

Make sure that when your final draft is approved you get this on paper (have some kind of “Okay/approve” field in your template.  And make sure you only need approval from this one party.

This will greatly enhance your work life and reduce stress!

Seperate
When dealing with texts it is often times difficult to seperate contents from appearance. Or your style of writing from the subject you are writing about. For example in legal texts your re-writing it may change the legal validity of the text. And there’s another problem with texts: anybody who is able to perform the act of making letters into words and making words into something other can understand, thinks they can write. Technically they can. But writing good web texts is a specialists job. You make the style, those not responsible for writing the web texts merely provide their own specific speciality. They tell you what. You tell them how.

The pros of a good reviewing process
Having a good process has a few advantages. By having a process you make sure that the right people have the right responsibilities. You provide insight into what people can expect of you and what you need from them to do the job. This way you can prevent unnecsesarry discussions en ego-wars and – not unimportant- doing work double. This will enable you to work faster and with a higher standard of quality. While at the same to preventing that the web content specialist is at the end of the line and gets the blame for earlier delays (by other parties).

Are you a web content writer? What does your reviewing process look like?

Related posts:

1. Your onsite search engine – a treasure cove
2. Content is important – part 2

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Cockroach
I found out the hard (and tropical) way that in other parts of the world (besides Western Europe) insects are not as small as I’m used to. When living in Aruba I ran into a few of thesehuge  creepy crawlers and to this day I am afraid of cockroaches. You can imagine that this flash drive doesn’t tickle my fance. Hey but I’m sure there’s someone out there who’d just love to get his hands on the  cockroach. Did I mention Yuck!

Lego
I’m sure you played with legos when you were a kid. Now you’ll never have to stop playing: USB-lego.

Cardboard
Green is the thing! So this recycleable USB flash drive is keeping up with the latest. 

Panda
This panda-USB is horribly ugly. But if you do decide to buy one of these pandas, you are supporting the World Wildlife Fund. 

Watch
This watch doesn’t just tell you the time. The watch band contains a small flash drive for your file keeping pleasures. 

Big Ben
Do you just Love the Big Ben? Well you must if you are to buy this eye-insulting USB flash drive.  

Rusty
I mean come on, who doesn’t want a rusty flash drive.

LSD sheep
I just don’t know about this sheep-like-thing. But it’s a flash drive, so there you go!  

Kettingzaag
In a muderous mood? Well, people don’t kill people, flash drives do…or…whatever. 

Rubber Chicken
I’m not sure you should plug this flash drive in at the office. On the other hand, I’m sure it will lead you to become more popular with the geeks at work. 

Tampons
With these you can ride a horse, play tennis and swim – oh and you can save your data to it!

Sheep
Another sheep. This one may not be tripping on any type of hallucinatory drugs. It does seem to be enjoying itself though.

Glasses
Not just a flash drive but a bookmarker too. Not just impractical but nerdy too!

Snoopy
How to abuse and violate a childeren’s icon? Make it this shade of pink! 

Notes
Everyone should have one of these. Just makes you think now why didn’t I think of that?

Holy Mary
The product page poses the right question: Is there anyone who hasn’t sometimes wished for holy backup to protect their most precious data? Of course not!

Sperm
You can’t buy this one, but enjoying the image is allowed

Tape
Remember the days of mix tapes? It was a beautiful time, filled with days of taping all your favorite music for that special someone. Well here’s something to take you back. 

I’m sure there must be something in this list for you! but if you have your own little special flash drive, I’d love to hear about it.

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Surprise
Well, do I have a surprise for you. This is not just a great tale, it’s what you have access to when you take your onsite search engine seriously. Each time a visitor uses your onsite search engine he is in fact telling you what he needs. He’s helping you understand what content you are missing and what content you have hidden to deep down for him to find. Take heed of what he’s trying to tell you and your site will be better for it.

Missing
This one is obvious. When your visitors can’t find what they want through regular navigation they will try searching for it. Use their keywords to find the content you need to offer them. When writing for a website, you try to write from the visitor’s perspective. But -not being a client yourself – you are limited. By using the statistics from your onsite search engine you find out the keywords related to the content they need. Use these to create new content. Some of it may be questions to which you found the answer obvious: your visitors didn’t. Or information you found useless: your visitors didn’t.

Hidden
All the interaction designers in all the world couldn’t make a website that everyone understands. Humans are the same in many ways, but also as unique as the evolutionary coincidence that has enabled us to thrive as a race. Your navigation won´t hit home for everyone. Your onsite search engine will help you figure out what content you have hidden too well for visitors to find. Based on the statistics you can either change your navigation or find new ways of disclosing content like for instance related articles or access to frequently asked questions (faqs) on each page.

Do you use your onsite search engine’s statistics to improve your website?

Related posts:

1. Content is important – part 2
2. Content is important – a short reminder
3. Searching and monetizing Twitter

Choose the right subject
A great source for subject matter if you’re out of inspiration are your website statistics. If visitors Google you on certain key words for which you have yet to make content, then do so.

And when choosing a subject, remember to keep your visitors in mind; tell them what they need/want to hear. Don’t tell them what you want them to know.

Choose the right author

Does your site contain highly specialized content, have it written by a specialist. Writers who don’t actually know enough about a given subject will get stuck in clichés and remain on the surface of said subject.

Also make sure you consider your target audience when choosing an author. Aiming for teenagers, find a writer who understands teenagers.

Offer your visitors rich content

Rich content means going a step beyond just articles. Provide video’s, pictures, link to more and related information and resources on your articles.

Wrap up

When choosing and making content for your website your First concern is your customer. Ask yourself, where would you hang out? The joint filled with ads and not much else interesting or would you prefer the place where the site owner offers you content that enhances your life/ knowledge/experience etc.?

Keep in mind that internet customers can leave your e-store any time they choose to. One click on the little cross in the upper right corner of their screen and they never have to deal with you again. Don’t just offer them a visually pleasing and well organized website (do offer them this, just don’t stop there) but also offer them relevant content.

Related posts:

1. Content is important – a short reminder
2. Your onsite search engine – a treasure cove

Once visitors are on your site, content becomes the most important aspect to focus on. And – believe it or not – the power of good content is still underestimated. Which is a shame, because good content plays an important role in the Google-effectiveness and marketability of your website.

A short reminder to all of you who have forgotten why good content is pivotal:

Good content

1. Keeps visitors on your website
2. Makes visitors trust you
3. Makes people share your website with others
4. Makes other site owners link to your website
5. Improves your find ability in Google and other search engines

Related posts:

1. Content is important – part 2
2. Your onsite search engine – a treasure cove