Writing Own Newsletter

Goldenboy

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Mike Waldron
I am thinking about sending out a newsletter every 4 months. Any ideas for quarterly columns? How many pages? I want to make it personable. Help a brother out.


Golden Boy
 
G

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Guest
You Cheap flocker....have your wife call me like I told you 6 months ago.




Chad
 

Jim Martin

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we do our every 3 months it is usually about 4 pages We buy the Bridgepoint one and change it around to fit the company....... I know there are others out there but Bridgepoints seem to be more friendly to work with

But If you keep getting all those walk ups just pay some one to make the thing for you LOL
 

-JB-

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JB
Been writing my own for 7-8 years now, I love it, so do our clients because they can tell I wrote it. And many actually read the freakin thing!
Will post more tomorrow must sleep now very tiredddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
 

Jay D

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Big bang marketing has 20 quarterly newletters for i think 150. Decent and you can go in and change them if you want. Randy is the dudes name check icsmag or is it cleanfax. I can't rememberr. "They say the memory is the second thing to go, You know.......... I can't remember the FIRST."

Mister Sir :roll:
 
G

Guest

Guest
Waldo,

Get your cheap ass off the computer and call me. I write my own and can help you out. Don't buy them, you can make a much more personal newsletter when you do it yourself.


My daughter wants me to add a stupid smiley face so I am doing it for her and she yelled at me for typing ass. :oops:

Dave
 

Billy

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BH
We put out an 8 page color newsletter monthly. It has lots of good info we used to use a packaged one. Audra didn't like it so we started doing it our selves. We have three 13 x 19 printers we use for this. We missed quite a few this year because of printing issues so we bought extra printers to speed it up. Because clients started asking about it & saying they missed it. We didn't even think they were reading it really.

So now it is back in full force monthly. We try to do each month a little in advance so it can be ready for first of month. It is allot of work but it does work if you want your clients to remember you. We have actually had some businesses want to advertise in it but for now we want to keep it ours. This way advertisers can't control what we do.
 

J Scott W

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Jeffrey Scott Warrington
Making your own newsletter is not hard. Finding the time to prepare your own newsletter on a a regular schedule is difficult. It often means it doesn't get done on time or your don't do a top quality job or you take away time from something else that should be done.

Several places (including Bridgepoint) have prepared newsletters that come out every month or two months or every three months. In a few minutes you can customize it to your business and location.

It is not so much that you can't do your own newsletter - It is the time could be better spend on other things. Newsletters don't cost that much. A few cents each per month when divided between a few hundred customers.

Scott Warrington
 

billyeadon

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newsletter

You would be better doing it monthly. That way your customer sees your name monthly. Remember that although we live and breathe carpet cleaning our customers don't.

The most popular parts of newsletters are usually recipes. If you are writing this yourself try to add in community news. Anything besides another article on the joys of cleaning.

Good luck.
 

Desk Jockey

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Have your wife call me too! (no help with the newsletter, but if Chad is going to hit on her, I might as well also!):wink:

Let a pro do it, stick to what we do best, cleaning.
There are lot of the newsletters out there available for purchase, I'd check them all out. You can even some on CD, if you feel you have to be involved.

You'll save yourself time and effort of designing and writing, plus it will just look more professional in the end. 8)
 

Rambo

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I think JonDon has the Newsletter down to a science. The fact they do all the mailings and at a reasonable price sold me. I just don't have the time to do one and don't want to. 8)
 

Blue Monarch

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If you write well and fast, do it. If not, I'd think time would be better spent on other things and would buy it.
 

Steve Toburen

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Waldo,

We did our own newsletter for quite a few years on a quarterly basis. The format included:

1. A personal letter from yours truly to our customers.

2. A recipe from one of our customers. We always ran an ongoing contest and offered a 20.00 gift certificate to the "winner". The reality was that everyone who sent us a recipe won. One time we had a typo and made it a "$200.00" contest. Yup, I bit the bullet and did 200.00 worth of cleaning free.

3. An employee profile. This is great for two reasons. First, customers love seeing what type of individuals are going to be coming through their door. I always tried to include facts on wives, number of children, etc. (this was assuming my tech KNEW how many children he had fathered!) However another reason we really liked Employee Profiles is it made techs feel really "special". Lets face it. Pushing a scrub wand is not a high prestige job. Anything I could do to raise my employee's self respect was great.

4. Community calendar. Here you can run charity events that your customers are part of. The nice thing about this is you also include who asked you to run it. Especially in a small town it is great to subtly let your other customers see who uses your services.

5. A technical column for the homeowner. We ran articles on proper vacuum selection and use, spotting tips, carpet selection guides, etc.

6. Humor (clean) is always appreciated. We also would run trivia contests.

I hope this helps, Waldo.

Steve Toburen CR
Director of Training
Jon-Don's Strategies for Success

PS HOWEVER, Waldo, even after saying the above I gotta say that I am with Scott Warrington, Richard Chavez and Rambo above. (Even though I must say I like Rambo's comment best!) CAN you do your own newsletter? Sure. I did for years and it was agonizing. SHOULD someone do their own newsletter? In my opinion, unless you just LOVE doing it and view it as a fun hobby, I would say NO WAY. Why not? Let me count the ways:

1. Your time can be spent much more profitably cleaning/ marketing/ collecting back due money/ playing with your kids. All of the newsletter programs out there are economical and you can't do it cheaper than they can if you count the true cost of your time. (Remember that a turkey newsletter's cost is tax-deductible. Your time isn't.)

2. They need to be regular. We tried really hard on this but still found they inevitably get pushed off due to other deadlines. (I even struggle with procrastination on my SFS TIPS mailing to our members and I get PAID to crank these out! Sorry guys!) If you are part of a program, especially if the mailing is done for you, it is a turn key done deal.

3. Most of the programs (including Jon-Don's) allow extensive customization. Your time here is well spent on putting in personal details.

4. Better graphics. Professional companies hire good artists that will probably make your newsletter look better than you will. (I intend no disrespect for any of you budding graphic artists put there.)

Anyway just my opinion. BTW, I have no connection with Jon-Don's newsletter program either financially or organizationally. My comments above are generic in nature and apply to all the programs available out there.
 

Billy

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BH
Steve Toburen said:
Dear Mr. "Technical" Support,

PS I do hope your "Technical Support" function does not include copy proofing for Bridgepoint! :)


I second that Steve. My wife is always proofing everything. I make so many mistakes :lol:
 

Steve Toburen

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Billy and Scott gave me another reason to not do your own newsletter:

5. Packaged newsletters have professional copy writers and proofers that don't make dumb headed grammatical/ spelling mistakes.

Steve

PS We can't all be highly literate Pork Barons from Alabama. And Billy's wife says she has her hands full with Billy.
 

Billy

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BH
Steve Toburen said:
PS We can't all be highly literate Pork Barons from Alabama. And Billy's wife says she has her hands full with Billy.

Eyes rezemble thet staitment Stieve.
 

Cameron1

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Nov 14, 2006
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Home grown Newsletters

We do one about 4 times per year. It was modeled after Steve Toburen's when he was still in business. It is a lot of work but gets rave reviews from our clients.

We have been doing this one for so long that I am afraid to change. I would think twice about doing it unless you will have the time. I would go for one that is pre- written, but still lets you personalize it.
 

-JB-

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JB
Here's the funny thing about typo's and spelling errors, clients DO notice them. When I first started writing our newsletter (97-98, or so), spell check wasn't available to me. So, after the first newsletter went out I had half a dozen clients tell me what I did wrong, that's not too embarrassing, but hey if your good at something. Any how I decide to make a contest out of it, so the first 10 clients to call in and point out a typo or the like, got put in a drawing for a gift certificate. You would be amazed at how many people called in for it, and that's another opportunity to communicate with them, thus strengthening your relationship as THEIR carpet guy. Hey say what you want, but they were actually reading it!
I will agree though it may not be the best use of your time, but you get a chance to educate the client, to your ideals, and process, not just a general blanket type of "cleaning", besides, how much time do we all spend on Mikey's board trying to educate each other, surely educating the client has got to be at least that important doesn't it ?
What ever you choose just do the damn newsletter, it doesn't get done thinking about it & it's well worth the time and money, guaranteed.
 

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