In The News Monday, August 31, 2009 Staying on the radar screens of clients, colleagues, and business partners isn’t a bad idea—especially during tough economic times. More and more studios are turning to e-newsletters to gain the attention of potential clients.  By combining case studies and images of past projects with tidibits of info on design trends, a properly executed newsletter can be something clients and colleagues actually like to read, as opposed to ending up in the junk mail file. Three firms doing it well—Lorenc+Yoo Design, DesignSMITH Collaborative, and Go Green Displays—sat down with Event Design for a chat about why they started their respective newsletters, how they decide what information and projects to include in them, and who they’re targeting when they hit the send button. EVENT DESIGN: So, why a newsletter? Jerrod Smith, principal designer, Design­­SMITH Collaborative: I wanted to keep our company on the tops of the minds of our clients and others in the industry. I receive a couple of simple newsletters from scene shops, and it kept them on the top of my mind, and I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to keep it simple, I didn’t want to write a book. I know people in this industry are overworked, overtired, and really want to have fun. Jan Lorenc, principal, Lorenc+Yoo Design: To let our existing, past, and future clients know what we are up to four times a year. We decided to outsource the final editing to our PR firm, Communications 21, so that we would get it out each quarter with their insistence and schedule. ED: How do you decide on which projects to share with your newsletter audience? Gary Survis, managing partner, Go Green Displays: There is so much going on within the sustainable event space that we try to stay honest to the format, focus on cool information, interesting updates about us, and some really great information for people who read the newsletter. JL: We wanted to include a mixture of project types, defining the various types we are involved in, including our international work. We generally try to include a broad project mixture. ED: What’s the secret to keeping it interesting and relevant? GS: The surest formula for failure of a newsletter is to construct it around what it’s going to do for you and your products. You can’t look at it as an island unto itself—it has to fit into the overall strategy of how you position yourself in the market, and how you communicate with customers and prospects. Ideally, you want to put out something that is not overtly selling, that is much more focused on providing cool information in a really easy-to-digest format. JS: We always highlight two of our projects, and then at the end we include an internal article on new employees, parties, and that sort of thing. We don’t want the projects to be random; we have a theme to each newsletter, and we like to keep the internal story fun and lighthearted. ED: Who do you target with the newsletter? Potential clients, exisiting clients, design colleagues? JL: All of the above. We also send specific target market newsletters to new clients that we are pursuing. We place the older newsletters on our web site to have access on what we have been up to in the past. JS: Our database is categorized into existing clients, past clients, vendors, scene shops, graphic houses, potential clients, other designers, and fellow colleagues. Since we are focused on the process, we work with other designers—they’re clients as well. ED: With all the other deadlines designers face, is there a challenge in getting it out on time? JL: [The key is] getting our final project photos, and writing any content ourselves in a timely fashion. We discipline ourselves to write the project mission when we are working on the project so that we don‘t have to recall what the design intent was in the past. We write all of the initial drafts in house and furnish to C21 with their deadline in mind; we have it done on-time most of the time. ED: What’s your feedback been like? GS: We can track through in our analytics and see click-throughs to our website after we send it and other types of useful information like open rates. We realize that one format is not going to get you through forever. While this is appropriate for today, in the future we may have to incorporate things like video to help keep it relevant. JS: I don’t get a lot of direct projects from it, but I’m definitely on people’s minds. Right now, I’m hearing back from people about our rescued dog that was profiled in the last newsletter. Sharing stories and connecting personally is important. We’re not a corporate company and we try to present that in our newsletters. In that way, it’s been successful.
Main Office: 10 Norden Place Norwalk, CT 06855 Tel. (203) 854-6730 Fax (203) 854-6735 © 2010 Red 7 Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy Policy | Contact Us