How and Why to Use a Newsletter

As a pet sitting business owner, your goal when sending newsletters is to strengthen your relationship with current clients and incite interest in potential clients. You want to send only beneficial newsletters packed with valuable information to your customers. Don’t waste your time or theirs by sending newsletters devoted to undesirable products, services or information. Remember that your newsletter is a marketing tool for your pet sitting business and that even a purely informational newsletter should sell your business to your target market if you choose topics that are of interest to pet owners.

Your pet sitting business newsletters should be crafted with your audience in mind. If you’re sending them to current clients, provide them with information that they need in the newsletter. This can include pet care articles and news articles about your business, including business holiday information, changes in staff, and stories about new services that you are offering. If you’re trying to get new clients, craft your newsletter as a “teaser” and make it a call-to-action to invest in your pet sitting services.

Regardless of your audience, you can reinforce your brand and your enhance your pet sitting business profit potential simply by reminding your existing or potential customers that you exist and what you can offer to them to make their lives more convenient.

Offline vs. Online Newsletter Production

Offline newsletter production takes a lot of time and resources. Think about all the paper and ink you can waste, not to mention the postage fees! Producing a newsletter online, however, can save you time and resources because everything in it is efficient and self-contained. You don’t need much to produce an online newsletter. The bare minimum is simply an email address and box in which to type your message. But even simple newsletters must be dynamic and provide the recipients with a reason to continue reading until the end. When creating newsletters, make sure to:

• Use interesting headlines (subject lines) to grab readers’ attention.

• Provide links leading back to your pet sitting business website throughout the newsletter.

• Reinforce your brand. Provide your contact information.

• Spice up your newsletter with a few relevant images of products or services. Don’t add pictures of tarantulas in your newsletter if you only pet sit dogs.

• Format your newsletter properly. Use headlines. Break up text for ease of reading. Balance images with text.

• Consider offering a discount or bonus on your pet sitting services in your newsletter to increase interest in receiving your newsletter or trying out your services. As a pet sitter, you may want to offer a discount to new customers or bonus services for loyal customers.

How and When to Use Email to Follow-up

Newsletters that contain calls-to-action may require that you email the customer follow-ups to see results. In these cases, you should send emailed follow-ups to those recipients of newsletters who’ve yet to purchase your pet sitting services. The inclusion of discount or bonus in the original newsletter gives you a great reason to contact the recipients again to remind them that their pet sitting bonus offer is about to run out.

The follow-up email should be a few days after you deliver your newsletter. Give the recipients time to read and respond to the newsletter. Be sure not to send a new newsletter before sending your follow up to the last. Consider using an automated email system to deliver follow-ups as they can keep track of multiple email addresses and send mass emails easily.

Author's Bio: 

Danielle Chonody is The Pet Business Success Coach. For more marketing tips get her free 5 part e-course that exposes the secrets to attracting a consistent stream of new customers and reducing your marketing expenses at www.marketingyourpetsittingbusiness.com