September is a pivotal month in the world of public relations and marketing. It marks the end of the third quarter, a return to regular office hours, a rise in travel, an influx of projects, and general uptick in company activity.
The September/October timeframe is a great opportunity to pull together a newsletter or email note to your customers and partners. September ends the summer quarter while October heralds the beginning of the critical fourth quarter. It’s a time when businesses begin to reflect on the year’s activities and start setting plans and budgets for the next. What better time to get in front of your primary audience?
This communication might be used to “wrap it up” and cover the year to date (or other recent activity) or you can use the opportunity to “kick it off” and give your audience a heads-up about projects or events that will occur before the end of the year.
Milldam’s September newsletter always tries to do both: wrap up items from the previous month while alerting our email subscribers to items kicking-off in the weeks ahead. Our September issue featured an extensive list of client news published since the end of August. We also noted some industry trends that we’re interested in tracking throughout the fourth quarter. The general theme focused on “basics,” and included some PR pointers we find helpful to reflect on while looking at the PR goals that still need to be achieved before the close of 2016.
Whether you typically send email content on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, we recommend a few key items to include in your early fall newsletter:
Wrap It Up
- Look back at your company activity from the last few weeks or months. Are there product points you can highlight? New hires to feature? General news items to share?
- Consider the effectiveness of previous campaigns. How were your other newsletters performing? Links clicked? Social posts shared or liked? Use this content to inspire a review of the messaging that’s resonating with your audience.
Kick It Off
- Heighten excitement around your company for the last quarter of the year, especially for sales personnel and partners working to make quotas. What product enhancements could you feature? Are there other marketing campaigns to start from now into the new year?
- The last events of the year should be featured as well. Where can your customers and partners expect to see you? If you’re not traveling, how else can they stay in touch with your company’s movements or updates? Featuring social media profiles or upcoming blog topics are additional ways to generate continued interest in your future activity.
Need some inspiration for achieving the tips above? Check out this link for more content ideas and take a look here for some examples of successful newsletters.
Whether you sent something in September or plan to this month, it’s a great time to connect with your audience through a newsletter or email blast. We all love early fall for a number of reasons – make this newsletter one of them.
Caroline Haley authors the column “Caroline’s Cloud” and is Vice President, Outreach & Operations for Milldam Public Relations.
