e-Newsletters and Your Company

Very recently, we launched our company newsletter, Applecore Interactions, with three issues to date and many more to come. And really, what better time to bring it up: the e-newsletter is a subject that needs a little love.

First of all, it’s a great way to keep in touch with your customers. An e-newsletter keeps the connection you’ve built with your customers lively, and will hopefully give them a valuable taste of your expertise that leaves a favorable impression in their minds.

Plenty of readers still prefer e-Newsletters over the headlines-only approach of RSS feeds. A newsletter allows you a lot of creative freedom, and with formats that are often are a lot easier to digest.

Many businesses have struggled with the real purpose of a newsletter, both in current email format and its older paper cousin. What kind of information should it contain? How much are you writing for you…and how much for your company?

Of any good newsletter, 20-30% is promotion and news about the company. Beyond that, the most important thing is to always keep the reader in mind! It should be informative, entertaining and most importantly, worth their time! Offer articles that tie closely in with your line of business and suggest your company’s expertise in your field.

Newsletters give great feedback: you can keep track of the open rate, giving you exact numbers of how many people your newsletter is reaching. Make sure you give credit where credit’s due, linking to the full text of any article you mention or allude to—including your own blog or website!

Why not sign up for Applecore Interactions, our exclusive company newsletter? It’s full of great tips and tricks, as well all the things we stumble across in the interactive world.

A Guide to Business Development 2.0

At least once each day I get a call from someone trying to sell me outsourced development services. It's difficult to not be frustrated with these calls and it is increasingly hard to be polite, because they come so frequently. Yet, more than frustrated, I am just puzzled. Does this tactic still work? Who in this day and age would give business based on a cold call? These companies could definitely use a dose of business development 2.0.

Because of these calls, for a while I have been thinking about the impact of the modern age on business development. In the good old days, it all boiled down to the salesmen with the big rolodexes who could close the deal. But clearly, the rules have changed. How does business development work this days? What makes sense and what does not? In this post we take a look.

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