s an expert in your field before you actually meet them. One important point to remember is to create a newsletter you can easily adapt to an electronic version. Then ask your paper-based subscribers if they'd prefer to have it e-mailed. Some may want both versions, which is great. They may want the paper version to take Home, to file for future reference or even pass on to someone else.

Always be consistent

It's important that you establish a regular routine. Your delivery and quality of content can't be hit-and-miss, skipping some months because you were too busy or forgot about it. Your newsletter is a projection of you, so commit to getting it out on the same day every month (or three months, or whatever your timeframe may be), no matter what. If you don't do that, you'll just alienate your clients with your unreliable efforts.

So get your preparation and distribution systems for your paper newsletter well established and working smoothly and consistently before you even think about transferring it to e-mail. E-mail requires the same regularity, but a totally different system.

Make text look its best

Here's another decision you'll have to make concerning your electronic version: Will your e-newsletter be plain text or HTML? HTML is what's used on the Internet and can be more graphically sophisticated that plain text. Some pros and cons of using HTML are:

• Pro: It looks better.

• Con: Some people are not equipped to receive their e-mail in this format.
  
  
• Pro: More options and versatility with colour, font selection.

• Con: It takes many more kilobytes than plain text, hence possibly longer to load.
  
  
• Pro: You can "bury" long and ugly links in a simple piece of text such as "please click here."

• Con: It detracts from your message.

Don't rush into formatting your e-mail newsletter. Get the feel of it by looking at what others are doing. Lots of free newsletters are available from various Web sites - subscribe to a few and see how they're formatted.

Essential elements

Once you've finished with the body of your newsletter, there are two more essential elements that apply to both your paper-based and electronic version - you need a header and a closer.

The header is like a newspaper masthead. It gives the name of the journal, who's publishing it, where to find them, the issue number and issue date. The closer can give a bit more information about you, how to subscribe or unsubscribe, copyright notice, etc. Look at what other newsletters use in their closers to get a better idea.

Extra e-mail element

An attention-getting subject line is the most important part of your email newsletter. It's the first thing the recipient sees to tell them if the message is worth reading. If you don't grab them with your subject line, they may not bother opening your e-mail newsletter and your message will be wasted.

The subject line of my marketing newsletter (TIP) tells them that's what it is, and it points to the title of the lead article (for example, "Your New TIP Asks How Do High Earners Prospect?") so they know it's from a familiar source (and not spam) and appears to have some useful information inside.

Hopefully, this article will help you get started on assembling and producing your client newsletter, in both a paper-based and e-mail format.

You may be saying to yourself that newsletters you've seen look a lot easier than all of this. A lot of them are - the ones you either delete or toss into your recycling bin.

But you don't want that kind, do you?

Don Pooley, CFP, CLU, CHFC, has built his career as a marketing advisor to financial service providers by working directly with them for over 35 years. He's also been creating offline newsletters since 1976, and and ezines since 2002. Subscribe to his newest, free, marketing ezine from its web site, http://www.eTIP.ca/, and he'll send you his free ebook, "Secrets of Soft-Fact sales".

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