When you have thousands of employees, how do you communicate to them key issues of insurance, health plans, safety issues and more?
That’s where my team at Creative Direct Marketing Group created the content and design for a regular employee newsletter… that was unique and impactful.
To make this two year long campaign successful, we:
1) Set objectives. What do we want to accomplish? How do we measure the results?
2) Use direct response art. The key to success is creating artwork that is functional and readable, designed not to draw attention to itself but to the words. This means that the art is designed so the eye flow would be carefully crafted and the type font easy to read. That includes avoiding reverse type and utilizing caption for every image to enhance readership and increase curiosity.
3) Use headline that commands attention. Headlines can be 75% of the success of content marketing. For a newsletter, every headline has to intrigue and generate curiosity and desire to read. The headlines are not necessarily short but they are powerful.
4) Use direct response copy. We used direct response copy – meaning copy that is designed to enhance readership with a ‘you’ orientation, all the features turned into benefits, and a conversational style. That way the prospects feel that the newsletter is not talking down to them but with them.
5) Call to action. Every article has a purpose to call the readers to certain actions so that the content is measurable for feature evaluation.
6) All the content can be redeployed for additional usage in handbooks, programs, and future issues. Chevron discovered that the power of effective marketing, and in this case to employees, was with what we call VIVA – Valuable Information Value Added – so that the reading creates the anticipation for the next issue to read.
If you need help with the content of your native advertising, let us know and we’ll be glad to talk about it. Email me at [email protected] or call me at (310) 212-5727.