I trusted you with my real name, my real home address, and my real email address. In exchange, you promised me informative and relevant topic-specific information. Unfortunately, the quality of your newsletter is just about on par with the 50 other spam messages that litter my inbox every week. As a matter of fact, your e-newsletters are WORSE than those other useless messages because I actually paid attention to them for a few minutes. But no more…you’ve stolen enough of my time. I am unsubscribing (and, BTW, I am going to talk shit about your company to anyone who asks).
Free e-Newsletter Tips: Keep them short, keep them simple, make sure that they are useful, and keep self-promoting hype to a minimum. e.g. I don’t care who got promoted to VP of Sales last month. I don’t care that you just landed another relatively insignificant account. I don’t care that you just signed up your 1000th customer (only 1000? In a marketplace of millions?). I don’t care that you’re speaking at a conference on the other side of the globe. And I don’t appreciate you “re-capping” all of the other articles I’ve already read from my more authoritative newsletters.
You promised me value. Give it to me. Or I quit.
I get ten industry-related newsletters a day. Please make yours count. I don’t even need an entire article for cryin’ out loud! (Just a little something that points me in the right direction and gets me thinking.) I’m not asking much from you…only what you promised me when I signed up in the first place.
Please don’t waste my time, please don’t bore me, and please don’t insult my intelligence. Monthly newsletters are a great way of building your business and keeping your brand top-of-mind, I get that. But if your subscribers feel that your newsletter is nothing more than opt-in spam, you are doing your company more harm than good.