subject: Creating A Newsletter - Tips To Have One That Is Effective [print this page] "A newsletter is a publication distributed on a regular basis and generally provides topics of interest to its subscribers. Whether you are missionary providing information to your supporters or just a business providing information regarding your new products, a newsletter always comes in handy.
An effective newsletter should have the following elements:
Present your information as briefly as possible. Get right into the meat of it. Do not beat around the bush. Remember, your purpose is to inform your subscribers so not to bore them. There is no need to embellish as you are not trying to sell anything. You already have a captured audience, otherwise, they wouldn't be subscribing to your newsletter.
Make sure your articles are not truncated. Keep your articles long enough to fill the space but short enough so that you will have to continue in the next page. Truncating (continued on page...) might work for a newspaper but its cumbersome to have that in a newsletter. Use images if there are spaces left unfilled by the articles.
Divide your articles in columns and place breaks between the texts. This can break the monotony of a wall of text. You have the option to use boxes with colorful schemes to create breaks. They serve as ""time outs"" for the eyes of your subscribers.
Remember this word ""kiss"". Keep it simple, stupid. Your newsletters are not advertisements that you need to fill out with images nor is it a book that you need to fill with texts.
Think of a color scheme that you can use for the lines, boxes, and tabs that serve as background for the texts. You can use two colors or, at most, three. You can choose complimentary colors or different shades of a single color.
Use one type of font if possible. Serifs are those bars or barbs on the top and bottom parts of the letter (ex. Times New Roman has serifs while Arial has none). If you need to use a different type of font, only use it as a heading. Dirty fonts or those that look like they have been smeared should not be used. Billboards and graphic arts look good using these types but they are not needed in newsletters.
