One of the main reasons that online marketing campaigns fail is that business owners do not follow through.  They will start an e-newsletter, send out a few issues and then stop.  The excitement wears off or the task becomes too time consuming and they give up.  And without regular communication, the business falls off the reader’s radar.

The simplest way to ensure marketing success (and a positive return on your time and monetary investment) is to be consistent in your publishing. In an effort to help you keep on top of this task, here are three easy steps to take to make your e-newsletter campaign more successful!

1. Create a template that works.  It may take a few tries but find a format, images, colors and fonts that work with your branding and stick with them.  Make sure the template includes your logo, a link to join your mailing list (in case someone forwards it to a colleague!) all your contact info (include your LinkedIn, FaceBook,Twitter and other social media links) and recurring articles like product news, a calendar of events, a featured employee segment, a coupon or offer. Your template should include ALL of these so that it will prompt you each month. Even if you don’t use them, it is easier to delete them than it is to try to remember what to include.  Save this template and do not use it – create a COPY when you need it.
2. Create a twelve month e-newsletter plan.  Call it an ‘outline’ if that is less daunting.  Just take a few minutes to write down ideas or themes for the next twelve issues.  If you have a seasonal business, decide what you will promote and when (trips to the Alps to ski in the winter, beach towels in the summer). Don’t worry if you can’t come up with a full compliment of topics. Do what you can and fill in as you go. The goal is to give you a head start so you are not starting from scratch each month.
3. Using the COPY feature, create twelve issues and label them for the next 12 months (if you start in June, make a June, July, August, etc).  You now have your next twelve months of e-newsletters started!  As you come across articles that relate to the topics or themes you listed above, insert them or save them to files on your computer for the specific months.  When you present at an event, have someone take a photo and write a brief paragraph about the event.  When you get images of your new product, put them in a file and write a brief blurb about it.  When you read an article that you think would be of interest to your readers, save the link. Use articles that don’t fall into one of your pre-determined themes to create topics for future months or to augment other issues.

With these three simple steps you will have a full year’s worth of e-newsletters started!  This will make each month’s task a lot easier and greatly improve your odds for a successful online marketing campaign!