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How to Use Newsletters for Awesome Customer Service

Newsletters are an ideal way to connect with your customers. If a customer has opted in to your newsletter, they want to hear from you. You want to make the best use possible of that indication of interest and trust.

Newsletters speak directly to your customers and help build a relationship. A great strategy for achieving this is to send out a customer service-oriented newsletter that shows your business’s dedication to their needs.

Here are some ways to do that in your newsletter:

Provide news and updates that are relevant for the customer

You know it’s great that your company got that award and all, but that should not be the feature story of your mailout. The top story (which is the one that customers are likely to see if they click open your email) should be about something that will help the customer solve her problems.

The more often your customer sees copy that helps him, the more likely he is to click open your next email, and your next, and he might even start scrolling down to see your other stories — like that one about the award that shows how amazing your company is at doing what it does.

Show how your product or service can benefit the customer

Pop quiz! Which works better:

A) We’ve just released a new social media feature. It works with Facebook and Pinterest, and you can find it in your Dashboard under Social.

B) Save time! We have just released a new Facebook and Pinterest posting option that will cut your status updating time investment by a third.

Clearly B wins, but why? Because A was a description of the features, and it didn’t explain why the client should care. The second version works because it describes the benefit to the customer. Your customer service newsletter should always provide information about your product or service in terms of the benefits it offers.

Show how your business affects the community at large

If your business has a presence at local events, fundraisers, and other community activities, this is perfect content to include in your customer service newsletter as a second or third story. Your participation in the community lets the public know you have an interest in matters beyond your business. The contributions your business can make to the community show your dedication to maintaining a healthy relationship with your customers.

Feature an employee

To help build the relationship you need with your customers, make your business real! Small writeups about the people at your company adds that human touch and it will help customers build a strong emotional connection with your company. Customers will see that there are actual people in your business who care about their needs.

Update customers on internal changes that affect them

If your company changes policies, it’s a good idea to inform your audience of these changes via your newsletter. This includes good news and bad news. Indeed, proper handling of bad news (e.g., getting out in front of the story, explaining what you’re doing and why, etc.) will make your company even more trustworthy, because you’re being transparent. It’s always reassuring for customers to know that you care about their interests too, not only about the revenue they provide.

Ask for feedback

Building a relationship requires effort from both sides, which is why it is important that your business try to encourage customers to interact with the newsletter. By making your business open to constructive criticism, you can generate a public response that will indicate if you’re meeting customers’ needs. If you’re not, you can change your business in various ways to try to satisfy the customers and maintain their interest. Encourage them to respond to your newsletters with feedback, and then act on the feedback. This will show that your business is committed to keeping your customers satisfied.

Good customer service is an important part of making your business successful, and a great way to ensure that your business is providing the best possible service is through your newsletter. Newsletters dedicated to customer service will help build solid customer relationships, show that your business is constantly working for the customers, and can help improve your bottom line.

How to Learn Proper Grammar

You haz cheezeburgerz. I haz cheezeburgerz. We all haz cheezeburgerz. The “I Haz Cheezeburgerz” Internet sensation might be cute. It might produce some giggles. But that fat cat does not know the first thing about proper grammar. He has completely misused the to have verb, and he has left out the indefinite article “a.” His online meme would be grammatically correct if he had written, “You have a cheeseburger. I have a cheeseburger. We all have a cheeseburger.” There is nothing wrong with having fun with grammar (like with “I Haz Cheezeburgerz”), but there is a time and place for such language-play. In academia, business, and most of everyday life (e.g., menus, signs, newspapers, etc.), it is important to learn proper grammar (and use it).

If you owned an upscale burger restaurant, you would not tell your prospective clients that you “has cheeseburgers for sale” (unless you were the creator of the “I Haz Cheezeburgerz” meme). Instead, you would tell your hungry customers that you “have burgers, including cheeseburgers” on your menu. The difference between has and have might seem minor, but if you consistently use poor grammar, you will appear unprofessional and may lose many potential customers.

While it is one of the most widely used languages in the world, English is also one of the most difficult languages to learn. It might seem daunting at first to learn proper grammar (including when to use full verbs, auxiliary verbs, and definite and indefinite articles), but the more you practice, the better you will become at speaking and writing grammatically correct English.

There are five useful tips that can help native- and non-native English speakers learn proper grammar. The first tip is to read, read, and read. Go to the library, download e-books, read magazines and cookbooks (The Book of Burger by Rachel Ray is a cookbook that will help you find wonderful recipes while learning proper grammar). The point is to read as frequently as possible. Pay attention to every sentence that you read. Make an effort to fully grasp what the author is trying to tell you. This will help you to understand how sentences are structured and learn English grammar faster.

Another great tip is to read aloud. Reading the written word aloud has many proven benefits. It helps individuals discover the relationship between how words appear on a page and how they sound when spoken. There is a difference between written and conversational English; reading aloud will train you to notice the subtleties between the two, and in so doing, will help you to learn proper grammar. This brings us to the next tip: the parrot method.

When you are about to travel to a country where a different language is spoken, you might try to learn the very basics of that language. Books, podcasts, and language CDs are excellent tools that will help you learn basic English grammar. When you use a podcast or language CD, a language instructor will typically encourage you to repeat after him or her. This repetition of a word or phrase is known as “the parrot method.” Verbal repetition is a great way to learn how to precisely mimic what an instructor is saying. The more you repeat, the better you will become at learning how the consonants and vowels of a language should sound. It also teaches you where to place the subject, object, and verb in a sentence, which are key components for anyone who is trying to learn proper grammar.

While some people watch television or listen to the radio to learn how to speak a language, you have to be careful. TVs and radios are powerful tools for learning conversational English and building your vocabulary, but they are not necessarily the best avenues to learn proper grammar. You may also want to consider taking online English grammar courses to help learn grammar. There are many available online, so be sure to find one that is from a reputable company.

The last tip is to practice writing to enhance your grammatical prowess. Be sure to write in complete sentences (which means including a subject and a verb). If you have a friend who has impeccable English skills, you might ask him or her to read what you have written. Feedback from an English language expert should help you to improve your grammar as well.

If you do not wish to sound like a virtual cat, you can learn proper grammar by practicing one, some, or all of the aforementioned tips.

How to Create a Content Strategy

Before you can begin marketing your business online, you need to create a strategy that outlines exactly how your marketing will work. Just like any goal, establishing an online presence is a process that needs to be planned out, step by step. This way, you can use the content to spread your business’s name and help your business grow. A content strategy is a plan that you can use to determine what content you publish, when to publish it, what platform you use to publish it, and what it will achieve.

Creating content is a great way to promote your business. And methodically planning out what content you will present to your customers will help you shape the message you want to convey. This a huge part of building your brand.

So how can you create an effective content strategy? Here are four steps to consider:

Determine your business’s goals

The best way to plan out a content strategy is to start with very, very specific goals. Why specific and not broad? Beginning with the end in mind will help you to work backward and create clear, actionable steps to get there.

A good goal might be something like: I want to have a ten percent increase in leads for product X by the end of next quarter.

Do you see how that immediately makes everything so much clearer? Instead of floundering around wondering what content to produce and then hoping it somehow goes viral, you’ve already made some decisions. You now know that if you’re going to get an increase in leads for product X, you’ve got to create content related to product X. And you also know that if you want to increase leads by a specific number by a certain date, you’ll have to produce Y amount of content and promote it by Z amount.

To be sure, there are still a few unknowns in the preceding paragraph. For example, it can take time for content to help your organic search traffic, and it might be difficult to estimate just how many pieces of content you’ll need to bump the lead count. You’ll have a better idea of how your content is received as time goes on. But by basing your content strategy on business goals, rather than using the so-called “spray and pray” approach, you’ll get results much, much faster.

Determine your audience

Choosing a specific demographic group for your content is an extremely important part of disseminating your message. Figuring out the exact target group can help you determine what types of content should be shared, what medium you should share it through, and even the specific phrases you need to use.

Specific phrases? Really?

Definitely!

If you want your audience to be your customers, then you have to speak their language. For example, let’s say you sell high-end audio equipment, and you’re trying to grow your sales revenue. You could create several highly technical articles targeted at the sound geeks who get into heated debates over the best speaker cables to use. But are those the people who are coming to your store, or visiting your website? What if the people doing that are saying things like “I want something really good, but I don’t know where to start” or “All of this seems so intimidating!” If you use similar language when creating a piece of content that solves a problem your audience has, your audience will feel that you are speaking directly to them.

Your content needs to cater to the needs of your audience, so you need to keep their interests in mind when you plan the content you intend to share with them. The more you know about your audience, the better the experience they will have when engaging with your content.

What format and why?

One of the most cost-effective pieces of content to produce is an article, especially if you outsource the writing part of it to allow your team to concentrate on their core skills. However, other types of content might be appropriate to your audience. You could produce an infographic, a video, an ebook, or an email course. Again, think of your audience and their needs. What format best serves them?

How will you share it with your audience?

To reach your demographic, you need to share your content in a place that your customers will frequent. If your audience doesn’t know a Tweet from a twit, there isn’t a lot of point spending time promoting your content on Twitter, is there?

Take the time to find out where your customers hang out. You can do that by asking your sales staff, your customer service teams, checking your referral logs in your website analytics, and even just straight up asking your customers via a poll, or in a direct conversation.

Having a good long think about these factors will help you figure out your content strategy. And remember, a long term strategy beats short term tactics any day.