Keeping in touch with customers is more than sending sales offers.  Good correspondence should include items that are of interest and benefit.  Be sure that the format is pleasing to your readers. Often less is more. Don’t clutter your newsletter with ads or marketing material.  Spend time to optimize your content and format so you get more readers that look forward to each issue.

Choose a format

Format is a personal choice, but be sure that you choose a format that is pleasing to your readers.  Depending on your industry and customer base, you may have long or short articles. There are many ways to test format, but be sure to test and modify.  You can test with a select group of customers or you could create several formats and see which one works the best.  Both of those strategies take time.  At a minimum, track the opens and clicks from each issue of your online newsletter. If you use a newsletter service, it is easy to get these metrics.

Layout - Carefully choose a layout that is attractive and suited to your readers. Putting your logo at the top and information about your company and offerings on the sidebar is a classic format.  You may want to experiment with some more daring themes, but once you choose a format stick with it so your readers will recognize each issue.  Newsletter format is branding.

Article length - The length of articles not only depends on the topic but your readers. If your readers are computer programmers and your article is about specifics of programming, you can write long informative articles that are well read.  If you write articles for business people, you have to quickly get to the point. For your online newsletter, use links so the reader can learn more about a topic.