A central pillar of successful relationship marketing through email newsletters is delivering valuable content to your readers. One of the newsletter marketer's key jobs is to identify the kind of content that provides this value, and then to adapt and present it in a way that best fits newsletter objectives.

Coming up with the right content causes many marketers to furrow their collective brows as planning or delivery deadlines near. This is one of the reasons so many newsletters fall back on bland promotional material or free syndicated content, often to the detriment of subscriber numbers and response.

If you're facing the black pit of creativity, here are a few tasks you can undertake to identify and develop the kind of content that will bind (rather than blind) your customers or prospects to your email publication.

1. Profile your target readership

Use your existing information on the demographics of your (potential) readership, or define your own theoretical "target" reader(s) in as much detail as possible. Once you know who you're trying to reach, then you can extrapolate their likely needs, problems and interests, which you can then address with your content.

For a reader, valuable content doesn't have to have an intimate connection to your specific organization. So be generous in terms of content scope. Think of the broader context in which your particular organization operates when considering those needs, problems and interests.

Of course, it would be unwise to rely solely on intuition and interpretation, so...

2. Talk to customer service and sales staff

Talk to the people who deal with customer and prospect questions, problems and complaints. Service and sales staff can offer numerous insights into the issues and concerns shared by your readership. What common questions or problems could you tackle or avert through your emails?

3. Visit trade conventions, fairs, exhibitions and sales outlets

Get out of the office and "mingle with the masses". Nothing beats a bit of footwork for finding out what people are talking about, and what they're interested in.

4. Ask your audience directly

Since it's your readers that define what's valuable and what isn't, common sense says you should ask your target audience about the kind of content they'd like to read. As well as formal quantitative or qualitative market research, make the most of your existing readership and solicit feedback through your newsletter.

You can set up a formal online survey and provide an incentive for participating, or ask for feedback to an email address. If you do the
latter:

• Ask readers to send comments to an identified person, rather than an anonymous feedback@ address
• Invite specific feedback on a specific issue (requests for general feedback tend to go unheeded)
• Make it in the readers' own interests to respond, by asking for feedback on issues that will affect the benefits they get from the newsletter.

5. Review other sources of information

Be sure to monitor the newsletters, magazines, newspapers, websites, and TV and radio programs followed by your readership. What are the hot topics and features? What information might you add? What advice and opinion might you offer?

What's not being covered (in the light of what you've learnt from tasks 1-4)? Is there a new angle or content niche you can pursue? Offering valuable content is good, but offering valuable content that is unique is even better.

6. Synthesize

Take the information you've gathered from tasks 1-5 and use it to draw out the content which your readers would find most valuable. Consider, for example...

• analysis, opinion or information on relevant topics, ideas, events, news items, companies, industries, products, services, books etc.
• pointers to (and reviews of) valuable online articles and resources
• tips and tricks on how to get more out of your offerings, the PC, the Internet...
• anecdotes, stories and quotes
• a q&a section based on reader feedback or customer queries
• interviews or case studies
• news items

Still stuck...?

7. Think complementary goods and services

If your readers are interested in your goods, sites or services, then this tells you a lot about the other goods, sites, services and topics they'll also (potentially) be interested in. If you sell cameras, it's photography. If you sell ploughs, it's tractors and agricultural policy. Mediterranean cruises? Sun cream, Italian cooking, Greek mythology...etc.

This gives you more freedom to include content from outside the immediate confines of your own business. Ideally, you can partner with providers of complementary goods and services, and arrange to swap newsletter content. This also gives you access to a new set of prospects.

8. Encourage readers to provide content themselves

Invite readers to provide their own content. They can be an excellent source of articles, tips, ideas, questions (for you to answer) etc.

Interviews with customers or prospects on topics of interest to the readership make excellent content. It gives you the chance to market in a more credible context ("so how do you use the new Brownlow ZXT?"), encourages a sense of community, boosts a few customer egos etc.

9. Get help

If doing it yourself seems impossible or impractical, consider bringing in an email newsletter marketing consultant to help you with creative and content production processes. Or outsource content production to one of the many newsletter editorial and content services out there. If you do outsource, make sure the results stay true to the idea of providing reader value.

10. Review your objectives

Finally, let me reiterate that knowing what content provides reader value is only half the puzzle. You also need to ensure that you deliver value to both the reader and your business.

This means understanding how the newsletter contributes to your long-term business success. And it means deciding on the balance between content and promotion, or how to integrate promotion so that it becomes valuable content in itself. Hey, nobody said email newsletter marketing was easy...