How to Catch The Eye of That Special Someone (The Reader)
Maximize
the Power of Newsletter Copy by Learning a Few Simple Rules
If you've taken the time to put together a newsletter, you want to be sure that people are going to read it. In today's information-saturated world, people are looking for information that is easily accessible and relevant to their lives. According to Newsletter Factory President Ken Hilderhoff, "When someone picks up a newsletter, they automatically skim it for information that's important to them." This information is found in several places:
1. Headlines are the most frequently read items, getting 70 to 90 percent of the readership. Because they are read the most, headlines should do everything possible to get people to want to read the article. Effective headlines are:
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Long. They should contain as much information as possible.
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Summaries of both the features and the benefits of the information. Features answer the question, "What is it?" Benefits answer, "What's in it for me?" You can't have one component without the other: Without the features, the benefits lack credibility; without the benefits, the features lack relevance.
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Action-packed. Make good use of verbs. Make people want to read the article — don't just summarize what's in it.
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Written in upper- and lower-case type. We use word-recognition to read, and we more quickly recognize the shapes of words when they are in upper- and lower-case type. "You want to make everything as easy to read as possible," suggests Hughes. As a general rule, The Newsletter Factory capitalizes the first letter of every word in a headline except for articles (a, an, the) and short prepositions (of, to, for).
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Flushed or aligned left. This tells the reader that the information is news, not an advertisement, whose headline would be centered.
2. Subheadings are the second-most read component of the newsletter. Keep in mind that subheads are subordinate to the primary information contained in the headlines. Don't misuse subheads by using a boring headline, then hiding the important information in the subheads. For instance, you don't want to use "President's Message" as a headline — no one, except the president, will read the article. Instead, create a catchy headline based on the information included in the president's article, then use "President's Message" as your subhead.
3. Like headlines, photos and photo captions should show action. People will read up to five lines of caption, so the caption can be as long (or detailed) as it needs to be in order to convey the importance of the photo. Pay close attention to the people in the photo:
- Are they doing something? Even "grip and grin" photos, in which the subject is receiving an award and shaking the presenter's hand, are preferable to those photos in which the subject is simply holding the award. Another way to avoid the impression of a static photo is to place the subject off-center.
- Can you see the faces of the subjects? Eyes gravitate to eyes, so shots of faces will draw attention to your article.
4. Once readers are drawn into the text of the newsletter by the headline, subhead, and photos, lead-ins are used as textual roadmaps to remind them where they are on the page; they serve as places for the eye to follow. Lead-ins typically look like abbreviated titles within the body text of an article. Other types of lead-ins are bold-faced or italicized proper nouns. For example, lead-ins in internal newsletters might be employees' names. Readers will be drawn to an article about someone they know.
5. As noted above, lead-ins serve to guide the reader through the bulk of the newsletter: the body text. A newsletter's body text is read by only 5-10 percent of your readers. So why bother writing standout articles? Because the body text contains 95 percent of the newsletter's persuasive impact. All the selling of the newsletter goes on here: The body of an internal newsletter sells employee loyalty, a sense of community, and employee involvement; the text of an external newsletter sells your product or service. A few tips to keep in mind when composing the body text of your newsletter:
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Set the text in serif type, which is easy to read.
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Don't double space between paragraphs. Double spacing will signal to the reader to stop reading. Instead, single space within and between paragraphs, indenting the first line of each paragraph.
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Don't justify the copy to the right. Doing so makes the text square and hard to read.
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Do away with widows and orphans (in the text, that is). A widow is a line containing only part of a word or short word; an orphan is a single line of type appearing as the first line of a page or column.
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Don't have too many hyphenated lines in a row. Broken lines make the text hard to follow.
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Limit paragraph length to approximately six lines.
Remember, readers prefer ease and relevance. The presence of these qualities will ensure that your newsletter is read and appreciated. Their absence will ensure that your hard work winds up in the garbage.
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