Maximizing Customer Engagement: Newsletter Tips and Tricks

[lisasfuncooking]

Part of my new years plan is to provide better customer service and send monthly newsletters out. So I got my tasty tidbits and icontact account all set up. Absolutely love it! I sent out my Spring/March Newsletter about the new products. I changed it a bit and added a paragraph:
Want to be entered in my drawing for a FREE GIFT! Send me an email to: xxxxx, with your name and phone number. Under subject write "free gift". Last day to enter is March 7th, and winner will be notified on March 8th. Hint: the free gift is one of these new products.
I thought it would be a good way to increase customer contact. I would just get the product off a show I am submitting next Sunday.
To my surprise I had a huge % of customers who opened my newletter:thumbup:. Most of them 2-4 times. But ONLY ONE actually read the whole thing because I had only received one email to be entered in the drawing! And yes, I check my spam folder just in case. Makes me wonder if they even read any of it or just look at the pictures.:yuck: Then they obviously didn't read about hosting a show either.
Just wondering what you all thought?

 

[etteluap70PC]

love it!!! wish I had read it before I sent mine out.

 

[jbondr]

Just got my newsletters out today and tried the "free gift" offer. It is now 8 hours later and I have one response. I expected more but the one response came with a $50 order. Not bad!

I put the offer near the end of the newsletter. Where did you put the offer in your newsletter?

 

[Jennifer E]

I am a newbie. Can you explain Tasty Tidbits and Icontact. I know that TT is a newsletter and icontact is a newsletter email service. Just wondering if they are free and how they work.

 

[lisasfuncooking]

I put the free offer directly in the center of the page. In between the new products. It was large fonts with FREE capatilized.
Tasty tidbits www.tastytibits.net has numerous newletters to choose from that you can send as is, or make changes how you want it. You could sign up for a free trial to see how you like it. Icontact.com is a mass email that you send the tasty tidbits newsletter to. You store all your contacts in the icontact. From there you send out your emails/newletter. I love it because you could track who opens/deletes and clicks to your website. icontact.com also has a free trial.

 

[Jennifer E]

Thanks, I will look into both of those sites.

 

[pamperedharriet]

You will like/love the tasty tidbits newsletters, Jennifer! Joy does an awesome job. She includes recipes and covers just about every angle on our business!

 

[momoftwins]

I wish I had the money right now to renew my TT subscription as I really need to send something out! I am going through a divorce and I really need the shows and money!

 

[Sheila]

I format my own newsletters in iContact. I put a recipe at the top, then any important info right below that. Like Feb's NL was announcing my Open House & then my upcoming military move to mainland Japan. I have a bunch of links down the left side for hosting a cooking/catalog show and links to learn more about being a consultant. I can then monitor who's clicking and reading what! Mine is VERY short sweet. Enough to keep my name in front of them each month, give them a recipe to keep them opening it each month and then the pertinent links to click to learn more about specials. It works for me! My step-sister was a consultant in the 90's and her newsletter was so freaking long it would literally take you 5 full minutes to get through it ... if not longer. I quit reading them all together because it took for freaking EVER! So it's important for me to keep them short & sweet so that my readers don't get bored & delete it without reading what I want them to read.I had a GOOD turnout for my Open House. I was hoping for some bookings for my new recruits, but ended up with a $640 Cooking Show (since we did several recipes and let them test them! ) - so I got the commission PLUS all the host benefits. Not bad for 3 hours.