Having a sale and sending out a newsletter is an all day affair for me. I take that back, several day affair. As I mentioned this week is Administrative Professionals Week and to celebrate Naughty Secretary Club is having a 25% off of everything sale. All you have to do is enter the word SECRETARY in the coupon/voucher field when you check out and presto magic.
So how is it that I got started around 9am today and it is now almost midnight and I am still not finished with everything I have to do to spread the gospel about the big sale? Well because as any small business owner should know these things are a multi pronged attack for maximum effectiveness. An important thing to note is that I do not do all of this for EVERY newsletter I send out. As a matter of fact I don’t send out newsletters that often, there is a thing as too many newsletters. The Administrative Professionals Week sale is an annual tradition and our biggest sale of the year so I go all out. I have broken them down into 15 tips and ideas for your next newsletter and peppered the whole thing with pretty pictures of the new Hot Pink Pistol Purses we just added today and their matching goodies!
1) I start my hiring someone to make my newsletter, this time around it was Karly Hand because my Photoshop skills are not exactly amazing. I write out all the text, choose the pictures and send it over to a designer to make newsletter magic. It’s a fact that newsletters with pretty pictures get more clicks than just text.
2) I blog the newsletter image on my blogger, My Space, Indie Public, Face Book, Austin Craft Mafia Blogger and My Space Blog, Stitch and My Craftivity blogs.
3) I post a bulletin through My Space and I have a system. Monday I post through my Craft Lab account, Tuesday will be the Austin Craft Mafia account, Wednesday is my Naughty Secretary Club account because it is actually secretaries day, Thursday my sister will send out a bulletin through her Hot Pink Pistol account, Friday I will send out the newsletter through the Stitch account. I always post my bulletins during working hours for both coasts since it seems most people play on My Space Mon-Fri between 9am-5pm.
4) I put a copy of the newsletter on my My Space profile.
5) I have spent the entire afternoon and evening emailing various bloggers about the sale. Blogs that are updated daily are often looking for content, especially sales, so it never hurts to send them a copy of the newsletter. Thanks to The Crafty Princess Diaries & Purple, Pink and Orange for already blogging about the sale!
6) I will eventually make a smaller version of my newsletter jpg to post on various profiles through my Naughty Secretary Club My Space account. I try not to just leave ads everywhere, but if you left a comment on my profile about your store or band you are getting one back from me.
7) Tomorrow I will write all my press contacts about the sale. These are the people at magazines and newspapers that will not be able to write about the sale before it is over this weekend but sending them a newsletter keeps me on the editorial radar. Plus the newsletter mentions that I am teaching classes, have a book coming out, added new jewelry to Naughty Secretary Club and other hot gossip.
8) I will probably mention the sale an annoying amount of times through Twitter this week.
9) Duh the obvious – I send out my newsletter. A few thousand people have signed up to receive my newsletter and through my web hosting company I send them the HTML newsletter with hot spots to all the specific links. I am looking into Emma and Constant Contact, but am not sure it is worth paying for a newsletter service when my web host provides the service for free. Also like with My Space I always set my newsletter to go out in the middle of the day for all coasts. I never send it on the weekend.
10) As one of a kind things sell on my website because of the sale rather than have them disappear off my site I go in and set them all to show up as saying “Sold Out”, this creates a bit of fervor and helps sales often times.
11) Speaking of the website I update the front page with information about the sale and change out the pictures often. We are adding new goodies all week long, like new Hot Pink Pistol Purses today so it makes it look fresh every time you stop by.
12) I use OS Commerce for my website and there is a service where I can send everyone who has placed an order a copy of the coupon. I am spacing things out and since I just sent the newsletter out today I will probably send that announcement on Wednesday. Sometimes the people that place an order on Naughty Secretary Club are not necessarily the same people who sign up for my newsletter.
13) As you know every Saturday I participate in a link exchange called Bead Bloggers with several other jewelry related blogs. News about my sale will be the link exchanged with the group this week and posted on all of their blogs.
14) I add a signature to my emails on my lap top, main computer and yahoo email about the sale. All week long when I send an email people are informed about the sale at the bottom of my email.
15) When I ship an order I email the customer to let them know I am popping their goodies in the mail. This week I will also let them know by just entering the word secretary in the voucher field they will get 25% off of their next order.
Lord just typing all that out has worn me out. I must hit the hay so I am refreshed for all the gospel spreading I have on my agenda for tomorrow! I’m curious what special nuances you have with your newsletter. Do you have a preferred day of the week or time to send your newsletter out? Do you use a service like constant contact?
I had no idea you had a blog! How cool! I’ve been a BIG fan of Craft Lab (I do miss it so) and your resin necklace on Crafters Coast to Coast inspired me to start playing with resin and now I CAN’T STOP! But why would you want to? Anyway, if you’d like to see what you started, click on my blog. THANK YOU!!!
xoxox,
Kristin
wwww.krishubick.blogspot.com
I know what you mean! Over at the Stitch Lab, we send out a weekly newsletter with updates about upcoming classes and some general good-to-know creative news. My background is in journalism and I grew up as a newspaper gal, so I love love love putting the newsletters together. It’s my way to pop out a mini-publication
Great post! This is so incredibly helpful. Thanks lady!
lordy girl! I’m exhausted just reading that!!!
But thank you, its a really good post. I NEED to send out newsletters, but keep putting it on the back burner. I have a constantcontact account too, which is supposed to be easy-but I haven’t looked at it yet….
Anyway, thanks for the universe nudge that I need to get on it, and email me with your book info or whatever so I can
Glad everyone found this post helpful. After I wrote it I was so riled up and mind a swilin’ that I stayed up until 4am thinking of all the pointers I left out.
Rachel thanks for the mini blog. I agree with things like classes it is important to keep people posted. I loved the Stitch newsletter you sent out. I thought it was informative about what you had going on there at Stitch Lab
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I realize this is almost a year old, but I just found it thru Rachel's AJC blog – thanks, ladies! This is invaluable to me, and so timely as I am currently redesigning my newsletter & website & gearing up to start a blog. Yay! Both of y'all are geniuses!