Communications Corner: Create a customer newsletter that gets read, not thrown away

​Customer newsletters can be the foundation of your communication efforts. The question then becomes: What kind of footings are you building on?
 
Don’t simply put out newsletters for newsletter-sake. Make sure you’re approaching newsletters with the right perspective, goals, and strategy in mind.
 
Here are 10 tips in three areas to make sure your newsletter is structurally sound.
 
Perspective – Address customers as whole, real people.

1. Understand what customers want and need from your communications. If you don’t, customers likely won’t tune in to what you have to share. You can easily find out what customers want from a newsletter by simply asking them.
2. Look at customers holistically – taking into account their community and financial wellbeing needs.
3. Involve customers in content creation – feature customer testimonials, hold mini-focus groups to gather input, and use customers as topic experts, if applicable.

 
Goals – Empower customers to take charge of their utility usage.

1. Provide valuable, actionable information within stories so customers can put it into practice.
2. Include links to additional information, tools, and resources that customers can access if they want to find out and/or do more with the topics covered.

 
Strategy – Respect customers’ valuable time, while reinforcing that you care about customers personally.

1. Offer short articles, tips, and other content in easy-to-read formats. (Think packed with information but that don’t take too much time to get through.)
2. Appeal to both the head and the heart. Some people will engage with communication that appeals to logic and reason; others are influenced by emotion. Use a combination of numbers/statistics and personal stories.
3. Use relevant, engaging photos, illustrations, and infographics to help tell the story.
4. Customize content to reflect your organization’s own identity.
5. Vet your content with experts to ensure you’re providing sound information.

 
Don’t have the time or expertise to create your own newsletter? IAMU can help. We offer a customizable, quarterly newsletter that utilities can provide to their customers – either in print or electronic form. For more information, contact Jeff Gorrie at [email protected].