Design A Newsletter That Gets Attention

Contributed by Jennifer Goldman

If you want people to read your newsletter rather than send it straight to the trash bin, you need to do more than just serve the general purpose of the newsletter. In order to capture and retain the reader’s attention, you’ll have to make your newsletter visually appealing, interesting, illustrative, and straightforward. Easier said than done, right?

The first step to creating an exceptional newsletter is to define the newsletter’s main intention. What purpose is it meant to serve? Is it strictly informational? Is it advertising a new product? The purpose of the newsletter should be your guide to making decisions about the layout. For instance, if the newsletter is supposed to catch the eye, you can use a large colorful, graphic on the first page—preferably one that has an element of mystery to it and evokes the curiosity of the reader.

The next step in designing a newsletter worth reading is to pinpoint your audience. Who are they and what are their interests? Under what conditions or in what setting will they encounter your newsletter? Chances are that your audience is either full of exiting clients and/or potential clients. If so, think about what questions your clients commonly ask. You can also ask your readers for their input on past articles and use that information as a guide for choosing future topics. Address your audience in a familiar tone, suing a casual, friendly, and upbeat voice. Incorporate personal anecdotes into your writing in order to humanize it and make it more relatable. If your audience partly consists of your competition, this should affect how you design. You want to use a layout that is appropriate to the industry. A financial newsletter should be simple, conservative, with standard fonts and primary colors, and should be primarily text based with perhaps a few line or pie graphs in the mix, while a newsletter for the fashion industry could be colorful and edgy with an equal ratio of graphics to text.

After you get to know your audience, you’ll need to decide on the image you’re trying to project. Are you and your colleagues a fun bunch of creative thinkers? Then you’ll probably opt for a casual and quirky style that incorporates humor, word play, and a clever juxtaposition of words and corresponding images. If you work in insurance and wear three pieces suits everyday, you’ll probably want to reinforce your trustworthiness with a more traditional style, logical organization, consistent use of similar fonts, and bold headers that establish your authority.

Another major consideration when it comes to developing a dynamic newsletter is the priority level of each bit of information you’re planning to feature. In other words you’ll need to sit down and organize your list of topics in order of their importance. This will help you determine where each feature should be placed, how large the font should be, and how much space you should devote to it. Obviously, the most crucial topics should appear earliest, and should be paired with the most eye-catching or curiosity arousing graphics. They should also have headlines with punch if you want to make sure the reader grants them his or her full focus.

The last and perhaps most important step to creating an attention-grabbing newsletter is decide exactly what your newsletter will offer the reader. The choices are nearly endless, although you should certainly weigh their appropriateness. Here are some items that go a long way to make a newsletter appealing to its reader:

Feature Stories
Web links
Graphic design elements that point the way to priority content
Kickers, headings, decks and other subheadings
Consistency of organization that lends to credibility
Photos, charts, tables, and other illustrative or supporting graphics
Quotations
Helpful tips based on your expertise (for instance, how to use Photoshop®)
Insider’s privileged behind-the-scene glimpses
Puzzles
Comic strips
Horoscopes
Schedules
Contests
Acknowledgements

While these measures are apt to make your newsletter a success with readers, there are a few mistakes that you should avoid.

Be careful not to get carried away with too many fonts, graphics or format changes. The result could be a dizzying and disorganized mess that’s a headache to read. If you overdo the visuals, the reader’s attention will pull away from the text, undermining its impact.

If you can help it, don’t write exceedingly long paragraphs. They’ll take up a lot of continual space. Long streams of text pose the risk of turning off or boring the reader. It is easier to keep someone’s attention if you’re grabbing it on short spurts, so break down those paragraphs into smaller ones, when necessary. You may even want to excerpt some of the text and place it in a sidebar instead.

No matter how conservative your market, try to avoid language that is so stilted or long-winded as to alienate or bore your reader. The same goes for being overly dogmatic. Use a conversational tone, and you will be true to your own natural writing voice.

These are just some of the many creative techniques you can use to design a stimulating newsletter that is bound to generate some buzz among your clients and colleagues.

Photoshop is a trademark of Adobe Systems, Incorporated, registered in the U.S. and other countries.

This article is intended for general informational purposes and does not provide legal or other professional advice. All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. Please read our disclaimer for additional terms and conditions governing access to and use of this article.