Posts Tagged ‘communicating’

Communicating with suppliers

Friday, April 18th, 2008
 In a business context, most people think of clear communications in terms of their customers. But it is also important to communicate well with your suppliers.

For instance, someone I know recently ended a project because his client gave him insufficient and contradictory information. This client had prepared a brief but work done to match that brief was rejected!

Obviously communication is a two way thing but if you make your needs straight forward it is more likely a supplier will give you what you want.

1. specify anything mandatory – e.g the logo must always be on a white background or the newsletter must be ready by the 1st of each month

2. explain your ideas - a rough sketch is ok as long as it is labelled

3. avoid jargon unless you are sure the supplier understands it the same way you do – that includes using their jargon if you aren’t sure of it yourself!

4. write or talk as if they are a customer – clearly, concisely and politely.

 

Have you had client projects where poor communications made the project a dreaded chore instead of challenging and interesting?

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Newsletter back issues

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

Offering an online newsletter is a great way of communicating and staying in touch with potential customers. Although some websites place their newsletter on the same page each time, most websites develop an archive of old newsletters – these previous editions are also called back issues.

What are the advantages of keeping back issues on your site?

  • the information is still available for people to read
  • the content is available for search engines so can help your site rankings
  • people unsure about subscribing to your newsletter can read a back issue or two and decide if it is what they are looking for
  • it develops trust – you aren’t hiding anything
  • it demonstrates your business has been operating for a while
  • it shows how often you send out newsletters – even if you say it is monthly, a visual reminder is useful

How do you present back issues?

It depends on what format your newsletters are in, but you can have an archive section which links to all newsletters or you may just link to a few recent editions on your ‘our newslettter’ page.

If you offer an archive, you may want to limit how far back you go with it, especially if you reuse a lot of information from older newsletters.

As long as the date of each newsletter is clear, it is ok to have newsletters public with expired competitions and special offers.

What not to do with back issues…

I recently came across a site with a free html newsletter that charged for back issues. I was recommended the newsletter, but was dubious about it’s quality based on what I saw on the website itself. For me to subscribe to the newsletter, or trust this person with my email address for that matter, I needed to see a back issue. However, I was not going to pay for one so I left the site without subscribing.

Even if you decide that charging for back issues is a good way to recoup some costs or make some extra income, I strongly suggest having one or two editions available for free to show people what they could get out of your newsletter. However, paying for something out of date that is generally given free will irritate most people and probably won’t bring in a lot of sales anyway.

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Posted in newsletter content, web content | No Comments »