View the newsletters here.
For today’s field trip, I’m pointing to the company’s archive page, rather than an individual newsletter. There are a couple of things I want you to notice.
1. There is an archive of past newsletters on the company web site. When you publish a newsletter and send it as an email, it’s gone forever. If you create an archive as Alle has done, people – and Google — can find it and get a sense of the work you do and your point of view. It lives on forever.
2. The title’s of Alle’s newsletters are fun and specific. Instead of the usual, boring, “September 2010 Newsletter” types of listing that you see on most websites, these are deliberately written in a way that makes you want to click and read more.
Nicely done Alle! Other thoughts from readers?
Michael
We migrated these Field Trips from Facebook and didn’t want to lose the comments, so we’ve posted them below:
Alexandre L’Eveille: Thanks, Michael. I appreciate the positive words. I am always inspired by your newsletters. Sometimes coming up with those titles is really tough. I take your advice and just start writing. It may take more edits for some issues than others, but getting it in gear is always key!
Michael Katz: I think you’ve got the knack. They drew me right in (and I learned some good stuff too about branding!). Thanks for being the guinea pig this week.
Virginia Hughes: Two things I love (besides the wonderful content!) are:
1) Title+subject — I get a couple newsletters that always have great, creative titles which draw me in but don’t tell me what the newsletter’s about. So when I archive them, I have to rename them. Alle’s approach is the best of both worlds.
2) The sales pitch in the left margin. Short, sweet, makes the connection between the newsletter and what Alle can do for me.
Virginia Hughes: Me again. One negative: when I went back to subscribe to Alle’s newsletter, I spent a couple minutes searching her website for a way to sign up. Could only find a link to UNsubscribe. Oh well.
Alexandre L’Eveille:Thanks, Virginia. I appreciate the nice comments and also the subscribe comment! I have only a send me a comment link….I’ve never gone so public with my enews before. It’s always been for direct contacts and customers. Now that it’s out of the closet, I’ll have to add a subscribe link on the enews and the web site. Great catch!
Rhonda Alexis Dirvin: At the risk of being repetitive, I really love your titles! They really make you want to read the newsletters, which are well written and just the right length on interesting subjects. 2 best practices that I see you are missing that you might think about:
1. pictures – although I enjoy the clean lines of your newsletters, pictures can make them more interesting, even if you put in a picture of yourself so people can identify with you or your dog or cat or something related to the subject matter (a skirt on a big butt??)
2. There are no links that I can see. While you can maybe judge people’s interest level by your open rate, if you provided a link to the rest of an article, you could get a better sense of how interested people are in that particular subject matter. Even a link to your website would be helpful for people to be able to read more. I would also suggest a link to your archive. People want to find out more and click around before they are likely to email you and you don’t provide a good way to do that.
With that said, I think these are “nits” as I really like your newsletter!!
Rebecca Gallagher: My favorite aspect of Alle’s newsletters is the ‘tough love’ with more than a touch of humor. It’s nice to laugh at ourselves while being reminded about the marketing best practices we know, but sometimes forget or overlook because we’re too busy multi-tasking & playing buzzword bingo! Thanks Alle, for the laughs, as well as the keen insights!! (And way to go to Blue Penguin for recognizing a good thing!)