What to actually put in a client newsletter

The mistake is writing about the business

Open almost any small-business newsletter and the first page is company news. A new hire. An office move. An award. A paragraph about how committed the team is to service.

None of that is interesting to the reader, and worse, all of it is interesting to the person writing it — which is why it keeps happening. The test isn’t whether it’s true or whether you’re proud of it. The test is whether somebody who doesn’t work there would read the sentence twice.

A newsletter earns its place by being useful or being human. Company news is neither, unless it changes something for the reader.

Who you’re writing for changes everything

Your list is not a list of prospects. It’s mostly people who already hired you, referred you, or met you and liked you. They don’t need to be sold on your competence — they have evidence. What they need is a reason to keep thinking about you, and something they can hand to somebody else.

That second one is the underrated part. A referral usually happens when a friend says something and your client remembers a thing you wrote. Content that makes that easy is worth more than content that makes you look impressive.

The mix that works

Almost every issue we produce is some version of four ingredients. The proportions shift by industry; the ingredients don’t.

• A personal note from the owner. Short, in their real voice, about something actually going on. This is consistently the most-read part of the issue.
• One genuinely useful article. The answer to a question clients keep asking. Written so a person with no background can follow it.
• Something worth keeping. A checklist, a local guide, a deadline calendar, a seasonal reminder — anything a reader might stick on a fridge or pass along.
• A small amount of firm news, and one clear next step. One column, not one page, and a single specific thing to do if they want to.

The personal note outperforms the polished content

This surprises clients every time. The piece a professional writer spent the most time on is rarely the piece people mention. The thing people mention is the paragraph where the owner talked about their daughter’s soccer season, the fishing trip, the renovation that went badly.

The reason isn’t sentimental. A personal note is the only part of the issue that could not have come from any other business in the same industry. Everything else — the article, the checklist, the tips — could plausibly have been written by a competitor. The note is the proof there’s a specific person behind the letterhead.

It also does something structural: it gives readers a reason to open the next one, because a story that continues is a reason to come back.

The note is the only part of the issue a competitor could not have written.

Blue Ocean Strategies

How to find the useful article without staring at a blank page

Don’t brainstorm. Look at your last month of email and phone calls and write down every question a client asked that you have answered before. That list is your editorial calendar, and it renews itself automatically.

The best candidates are the questions that slightly embarrass you to answer again — the basic ones. What you consider obvious is the thing your clients most want explained plainly. If three people asked it, three hundred people wondered it.

1. Write the question at the top of the page, in the words the client used.
2. Answer it in four sentences as if you were on the phone.
3. Add the one caveat you always add in real life.
4. Stop. That’s the article. Length is not the point.

A four-page layout you can copy

This is close to the structure we use for most print issues, and it translates to the digital and email versions with almost no change.

• Page 1 — masthead, the owner’s note, and the opening of the main article. The note sits top-left where the eye lands. The article starts under it and continues inside, which gives people a reason to open the fold.
• Page 2 — the rest of the main article, plus one short sidebar. The sidebar is the place for a definition, a common mistake, or a "when to call somebody" box.
• Page 3 — the keeper. The checklist, the calendar, the local guide. Designed so it can be torn out or screenshotted without losing the phone number.
• Page 4 — light content and the ask. A short client question, a recipe or local note if that suits the brand, firm news in one column, and one clear next step with a phone number and a web address.

The keeper page is where most of the value is

Of the four ingredients, the one businesses most often skip is the one that does the most work. A keeper is anything a reader would plausibly hold onto: a checklist of documents to bring to a first meeting, a one-page calendar of deadlines, a seasonal maintenance list, a map, a set of questions to ask before hiring anybody in your field.

It works for three reasons. It survives the recycling bin, which multiplies every other part of the issue. It is the thing people photograph and send to a friend, which is a referral with no awkwardness attached. And it is genuinely generous, which changes how the whole piece reads — a newsletter that gives something away is not experienced as advertising.

Design it as though it will be separated from the rest of the issue, because it will be. The phone number and the web address belong on that page too, not only on the back.

Getting the voice right matters more than getting the topic right

Two issues can cover the identical subject and land completely differently. The one that sounds like a person talking gets read. The one that sounds like a company communicating gets skimmed and put down.

The practical rule is to write the way you would explain something to a client sitting across from you. That means contractions, short sentences, and saying "I think" when you think something. It also means being willing to say a thing is complicated, or that the answer depends, or that you would not recommend the obvious option. Hedging honestly reads as expertise. Confident vagueness does not.

If you are having trouble, record yourself answering the question out loud and write from the recording. Nearly everybody is a better writer when they start from their own speech.

What to leave out

A short list of things that reliably make an issue worse.

• Stock photography of people in suits shaking hands. It signals that nothing on the page is specific.
• More than one call to action. Two asks is the same as no ask.
• Anything written in the third person about yourself. "Our team is dedicated to" is the sound of nobody talking.
• Reprinted syndicated content with your logo on it. Readers can tell, and it undoes the one advantage you have.
• Discounts, unless discounting is genuinely part of how you sell. In professional services it usually reads as desperation.

Industry changes the details, not the structure

A family law firm’s keeper page might be a document checklist for a first consultation. A tour operator’s might be a calendar of what’s worth seeing month by month. A salon’s might be how to make a color last through a Florida summer. A trucking company’s might be a plain-English note on a rule change that affects owner-operators.

The mix is the same in all four. What changes is that the details have to be things only that business would know. Generic content is the fastest way to make a newsletter feel like mail nobody sent.

The twenty minutes that make it work

When we run a newsletter for somebody, the client’s entire job is a short conversation. We ask what came up this month, what people kept asking, and what’s going on with them personally. That conversation contains the note, the article and usually the keeper.

The reason it works is that the material was never the problem. Sitting down to type it was.