The key issue underlying this is how do you keep your territory “rep relevant” and your role valuable to your vendors? How do you ensure your territory connections are immediate, valuable and worthwhile for your clients?

This all makes it more important than ever that you connect regularly with your sales contacts: circulate the latest info, sales tips and questions and control your costs at the same time. It’s time for a good look at the modern version of that old marketing stand-by — the newsletter, these days called the e-newsletter.

Reinventing Newsletter Marketing

Newsletters have been controversial marketing communication tools for a long time. Anyone who used them before computers remembers layout hassles and print runs, mailing lists, labels and post office runs. You also probably recall high costs for creative, printing and mailing. While some companies still use the print approach today, for most, the hassle and cost of printed newsletters outweighs the benefits. And then along came computers.

Today, everything is different, and not just their creation and delivery. Now they can be done with the click of a mouse for far less cost. The challenge today is getting your audience’s time and focus — a much tougher task with so much competition for their attention. Your e-newsletter must look sharp, be easy-to-read, and have helpful links that “click” with their interests. To help you succeed in this new world, here are some tips to enable you to energize your audience so they regularly get your message and can use that information to become more successful.

Essentials of E-Newsletter Success 

A successful e-newsletter program starts with a good database. You’ll need accurate contact details and their permission to include them in your e-newsletter distribution. Read on to find out how to publish e-newsletters that will look clean, be a fast read and deliver information that makes your customers more successful. Be sure to only send to folks that have opted-in to your e-newsletter and not simply blast it out to lists. You need them to want your information.

The entrepreneurs behind e-newsletter platform Virtual Representative (VR) have some great advice about what makes e-newsletters tick. Their story is even more pertinent for MANA because founder Steve Zaboji owns Balaton Marketing, a consumer electronics rep firm in the Mid-Atlantic. During one of his long car trips between dealers, he decided he needed a better way to get product information and sales tips to salespeople and principals throughout his territory.

Creating a New
E-Newsletter Platform 

Working with a team of reps, marketing professionals, and programmers, Zaboji envisioned the VR concept, developed it and turned it nto an e-newsletter platform centered on three key benefits:

• Make it easy to create a good-looking newsletter — automatically formatting the overall newsletter itself as well as the articles contained.

• Create an auto-sorting data engine — so the right people get the right information.

• Make it affordable — so more agencies can afford to improve their communications.

According to Zaboji, “We publish our Balaton newsletter every Friday so it’s expected in everyone’s inbox. They look forward to the latest sales tips, deals, product info and even our corny humor. These e-newsletters extend our reach and communication throughout our territory and strengthen bonds between our manufacturers, our dealers and ourselves.”

Recommendations and Best Practices 

Zaboji’s #1 tip for success: “Publish consistently. Your e-newsletter is viewed more like a magazine than just another e-mail blast. Marketing takes time and this communication format offers many benefits for rep/territory/vendor success. If you consistently publish a worthwhile newsletter, the results will be terrific. Furthermore, rep contact with the field is a dynamic process. The information and market intelligence gathered enhances our value to our vendors — and makes us more effective for our dealers. It is a true win-win scenario.”

Here are some more recommendations on e-newsletter publishing:

• Database management is a key asset. It is important you send the right content to the right people. Imagine if you sent proprietary information to the wrong people! It would be unprofessional and might even cause territory conflicts. The VR platform’s database engine automatically sends the right content to the right recipient. Select which lines each contact gets and the VR database engine automatically matches them.

According to Dave Bell at Bell Marketing, Seattle, Washington, “Our e-newsletter efforts have increased our contact with all our dealers. It enables us to get worthwhile information in front of them while it is new and pertinent. And I have been able to cut back on some of my travel expense at the same time.”

• E-newsletter appearance. In Dr. A. K. Pradeep’s best-selling book, The Buying Brain, he says approximately 25 percent of our brain’s activity is involved in visual processing. How’s that for mind-share? This means that it is very important to keep your newsletter design clean, clear and easy to look at. If it is busy or cluttered, it just won’t be read.

Database management is a key asset. It is important you send the right content to the right people.

Leveraging your expertise — “Ask and Ye Shall Receive”

E-newsletter programs, like the Virtual Representative, make learning a two-way street. Not only do they permit you to share your expertise with your marketing channels, they make it easy to learn from your market, uncovering their concerns, their lever of knowledge, and where the opportunities are.

One of the most valuable assets every rep firm possesses is the street perspective gained from the territory. One of the best ways to feed this “market intelligence” is through quizzes and testing. The Virtual Representative, for example, has a module that conducts simple quizzes or multiple choice tests.

According to Lori Jandrlich, marketing director at Hadco, a home appliance distributor, “Our e-newsletter program enables us to consistently reach customers, dealers and trade partners with relevant industry and product information. We even include a gradable quiz on the newsletter content, which makes the offering fun for our customers.”

Today’s Perfect Storm for E-Newsletters

While the challenges for reps have grown in severity, at the same time, business technologies have evolved to offer incredible power. Embracing the e-newsletter format can accomplish many benefits that contribute to success:

• Increasing territory presence and communication.

• Delivering product info, programs, specials and sale tips faster.

• Creating deeper involvement with each salesperson.

• Fostering two-way dialogue — problem resolution, product input, sales success.

• Reducing travel expense.

If you make the decision to invest some time now to develop an e-newsletter for your firm, the results will be very rewarding for a long time to come. And when you have questions (and you will), reach out to the experts and get the guidance you need. The time to strengthen your territory communication is now and the technologies that make it feasible are excellent.

© Carloscastilla | Dreamstime.com