How to Design the Perfect MSP Print Newsletter from Scratch (Part 2)

We recently talked about what you need to do to get started putting together your own printed newsletter from scratch. Now, we’ll go over some extra things you can do to add a personal touch to your newsletter, and what you should be doing before your newsletters get printed and sent out to your mailing list.

Go the Extra Mile and Personalize It!

Personalizing your newsletter is another way to hook your reader into holding on to that piece of mail you sent. What do we mean by personalizing it? We are referring to a few things that include:

• Employee Highlights: You can choose an employee to feature each month and write a short article about their involvement with the company. Feel free to add in some things about their home life to make it more personal.
• Company News and Announcements: Holiday hours, upcoming events, and a new service or product offering - all of these provide information to your readers. Include these whenever you have them.
• Promotions and Giveaways: Give an exclusive offer to those who receive your newsletter. You could even give something away for free (people love free things!). Set up a landing page, include the link in the newsletter, have people register there, and let the lead capture begin.
• Testimonials: Share what others say about the experiences they have had with you or your company. People like to hear what your other clients have to say about you; this gives them a sense of security that they are in the right hands.
• Events and Event Follow-Ups: Do you go places to speak about what you do? Do you go to tradeshows, or host lunch and learns or webinars? Include them all in your newsletter to promote it. After the event, you can add quick write-ups and some images from the event in question to show them off and show your readers what they missed out on by not attending.
• A Message from the Owner/CEO: A newsletter is a great way for a CEO to reach out to their prospective clients. Messages don't have to be elaborate. Consider writing about a simple new service announcement, holiday greetings, or a special thanks!
• Trivia and Fun Facts: Not all of the educating has to be in the form of an article; you can educate your readers by giving small facts or quotes that fit the general feel of the newsletter.
• Social Media Links: Having links to your social media pages gives the readers other ways of finding information they are looking for, and lets them know other forms of contact with your business.
• Comics: These help to fill space and let the readers know that you aren’t just all business.

How We Do Ours: Every printed newsletter that is a part of our Printed Newsletter Service includes links to your social media accounts, a fun Tech Toons Comic, and (when applicable) a holiday message. We work with you to help you customize your newsletter and can include any of the above personalization options - and more - depending on your preference. This content can be written by you, or our content team can do so for you.

Don’t Forget to Proof!

Initial Proofing

It’s all in the details, or so they say. This is a step that must not be skipped, as it will result in you sending out a printed newsletter filled with errors that may make readers question whether they should do business with you.

Proofing is looking at all the content and the little details in that content. Little details include the font being the same for titles and when it says "Read More" with a link to the blog on your website, there is a decent amount to make the reader not mad that they spent time going to your site. Basically, anything added to the newsletter should be triple-checked. Things may make sense when you are writing articles, but when read by another person, it can become confusing or just not make sense.

Proofing becomes easier once you have the template you want and know how the layout will look. Then, it becomes just adding the content to the template and adjusting things as needed so things fit properly. Each part of the process is very important, but proofing is what makes the print newsletter catchy to the reader. Some points to proof:

• Dates
• Calls-to-action
• Fonts
• Address
• Formatting
• Phone number
• Article Titles
• Promotions/Giveaways
• Table of Contents
• Trivia
• Images
• Quotes
• QR codes
• Margins
• URLs
• Formatting

We suggest proofing both digitally and from a printed file on your own printer. It will probably look different color and quality-wise compared to what it will look like printed by a professional print company, but this allows you to catch any issues related to the items above.

How We Do Ours: We have our print newsletters proofed by different team members, multiple times. This helps to ensure that any errors are caught. Each of the bulleted items above is checked, and rechecked, to make sure that your printed newsletters are free of error.

Getting Things Printed, Proofed Again, and Sent Out

Once the proofing process has been completed, then comes sending it to a printer and getting a file to proof from them to ensure that it is good to go. This is done to ensure that the print newsletter is going to look the way you are expecting it to.

This is also a good time to proof your work one more time - you can never do enough proofing! You also will want to make sure that the colors are what you were expecting, as sometimes the colors can vary from your computer screen to a piece of paper. If you find the newsletter has minor errors, you still have time to fix it at this point.

When the newsletter is fully approved by you, then you can send the printing company you’re working with a mailing list to use. Usually, it must be sent in a certain format for the printers to have the envelope printed properly. You can ask your printer about this or they may go over it with you if this is your first time using them.

How We Do Ours: Using our Printed Newsletter Service will get you professionally printed newsletters. We work with the printer that we use to ensure that your newsletters look good every time and each member of your mailing list receives their newsletter as intended.

Stop Putting in the Work… Let Us Do That For You!

At first glance it might have sounded like a great idea to get your business’ name out to the public, and then you kept reading and realized how much work it is. Don’t let this make you decide against having a printed newsletter for your business… instead, come to us! We can save you time and money with our Printed Newsletter Service. We have a talented staff of writers, graphic designers, and a marketing team that has this whole process down to a science.

We supply the content, build your newsletter, and have it printed and sent out to your list of contacts. No dealing with finding a print shop to do what you need done - we do it all for you, and keep you involved in the process from building to mailing out. You can choose to be as involved with the process as you wish by working with us to customize your newsletter, or being very hands-off and let us run with it. We even encourage our clients to send us topics that they or their clients want to see more of!

Visit our service page to learn more, and call us at 888-546-4384 to get started today with your print newsletter!