Why I threw your Newsletter away

So anyway I opened up that newsletter which you sent me today and after looking through it for a couple of minutes, I threw it away.

Do you want to know why I threw it away? Does it matter to you that I threw it away?

Well, to be quite honest with you. It was too much puffery. What wasn't about how great you are and how great your product was - tended to all be stuff that I have heard a million times before.

If you really want me to retain the newsletters that you send me - if you really want me to spend time focusing on your message - there's one big secret to getting my attention. And here it is, listen closely now: Tel me something of substance that I can use. If the information in your newsletter is Practical and Valuable, then I will focus on what you are writing. Otherwise, we are both just wasting our time.

Ryan Allis wrote an article on five approaches to writing a newsletter which will be valued by the readers. However, I disagree with Ryan's first point. Benchmarking and Statistics are useful but only when they are objective. I don't care that much about how well your company is doing. I care about how well your company is treating me and how good my experiences have been with the product you sold me last year.