Newsletter copy has to be fresh as fish

Clients just can't figure out why click rates and visits to their sites drop. And they look at the pros and say, fix it. Do something.

What they don't know is it's all in their hands.

Most of the time I see clients just doing the same old same-old. E-newsletter after e-newsletter has the same content, pushing the same old products and service, month after month after month. And clients--marketing people--can really be that dense. The obvious, that their readers see that they've seen it before so don't click, read, visit, isn't apparent to them.

Newsletters are like food; you want it fresh. Today. Like fish and vegetables you don't want it stale. No one wants day-old bread. You want if fresh and hot and smelling so good that you can't help but bite into it.

The same for good copy.

Every newsletter has to have news, and it helps that it's exciting news, but it has to be at least news. Not one bit of old copy. Pickup. Reworked copy. Not...one...bit.

And if you don't have new, well, hold on a minute, yeah, you do; you're just not looking hard enough. You're just not working hard enough. That's why they're paying you the big bucks.

And for all that old copy? I've never understood why companies don't put an archive on newsletters. A link to a part of their site that has all their old newsletters and copy and information.