Choosing the right title

The right title plays a major role in your newsletter's success

Your name, or your firm's name, is not an appropriate title for your newsletter! You may be its publisher, but your name does not offer a reason why clients and prospects should read your newsletter.

Following are some of the concerns you should pay attention to when choosing and formatting your newsletter's title.

Focus on your market

Here are some ways you can use titles to make your clients and prospects feel your newsletter is written expressly for them:

1. Industry

2. Occupation

Name your newsletter after the specific profession or job title you're targeting, i.e., Trauma Surgeon, E.R. Supervisor, or Lead Investor.

3. Problem

Choose titles that describe the goal your firm helps clients and prospects achieve, i.e., Dry Basements or Marketing on a Budget. 

Try "composite" titles that combine two, or more, of the above ideas, i.e., Marketing Legal Services on a Budget.

Case study

Consider the example of Espresso Dave, a client whose firm who provided portable espresso and cappuccino services to large corporations exhibiting at trade shows.

Although it might have been fun to call Espresso Dave's newsletter Coffee Time, the title would not have appealed to his primary market-trade show managers at large corporations. 

Instead, we called Espresso Dave's newsletter Trade Show Marketing, because the goal was to show trade show managers how to use Dave's service to build qualified traffic to trade show exhibits.

More title tips

• Keep titles as short and telegraphic as possible. The shorter the title, the larger the type size you can set it in. This increases the title's impact on the page. 

• Consider combining a short title with a longer, explanatory, subtitle-or tagline-that tells a story your firm. For example, Helping multi-national flaw firms profit from technology since 1975," etc. 

• Personalize the title with your firm's name as publisher above the title, i.e., Murphy Parker's Pet Tricks.

Action words and alliteration

Whenever possible, use action, or "ing," verbs, i.e., Power Marketing.

If possible, use alliteration-repeated consonants-to help make newsletter titles memorable, i.e. Fact or Fiction? 

Combine the above two points, for example: Packaging Profits.

Design considerations

• Create a separate graphics file. Never create the title graphic as part of the file containing your newsletter. Instead, create it as a separate graphic. This makes it easier to place and resize the title. You can also easily add your newsletter's title to your business cards, postcards, and website.

• Typeface choice. Since your title graphic is more to be "recognized" than "read," you can choose a decorative typeface design that reflects the desired image you want to project.

• Spacing. Pay careful attention to letter spacing. Use tracking to uniformly reduce letter spacing throughout your title. Use kerning to tine-tuning the spacing of individual pairs of letters. Reduce line spacing so titles emerge as a single visual unit.

• Color. Use color with restraint. With color, less is always more. Whenever possible, use a title color that forms a strong contrast with other text on the page.

• Avoid clutter. Keep borders and background simple. Avoid adding backgrounds, boxes, or borders, around titles unless they're really needed.

• Symbols. Use the appropriate symbols for copyright, ©, and trademark, T. Replace the word "and," with an ampersand, &, perhaps setting it in a contrasting typeface, type size, or color. (See below

Conclusion

A strong title is an investment that attracts readers and helps set your firm apart for years to come. It pays to do it right the first time, or redesign your current newsletter if it isn't accomplishing your objectives.

Learn to do it yourself!

Learn from the resources at www.designtosellonline.com. Resources include checklists, examples, templates, and worksheets. Remember: you don't need a design background, or extensive design training, in order to create an effective marketing program.