One of the most frequently asked questions that subscribers have submitted as part of our newsletter critique series is about the look and feel of their newsletter.   In this article, we’ll address one key element of this, which is consistency in style.   As an example, we’re walking Affinity Connection, an alumni relations fundraising organization, through a few steps that will help them achieve a more reader-friendly look and feel that is consistent and easily repeatable in subsequent issues. 

Affinity Connection is a group relations and fundraising organization that works with over 200 fraternities and sororities at major colleges across the United States.  An integral part of Affinity’s fundraising campaigns includes printed newsletters which they produce at a rate of more than 30 in a typical month.   Greg Woodman, Affinity’s president, has been a reader of IMN’s electronic newsletter for a couple of years now.  He realized that an online newsletter service could help him eventually convert his printed newsletters to a more economical, measurable, and effective service.  To test our service, Greg recently signed Affinity up as an IMN client and launched “The Connection,”a newsletter that goes to Affinity’s clients who manage alumni organizations.

Because his company is a development organization that is focused on the success of its clients, Greg doesn’t have a lot of manpower that he can dedicate to the design and implementation of his newsletter.  Consequently, issues of The Connection have slight graphic variations in them from one issue to another.  We encourage our customers to set up a consistent layout right from the first issue (by creating a template) so that subsequent implementations are easier for the publisher and easier for the readers who are trying to develop an ongoing relationship with your company.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen in all cases, and like Affinity, what results are inconsistencies that may hinder overall readership of the newsletter.   

Therefore, our suggestions for the Affinity newsletter team, which are based on their April newsletter, revolve primarily around the design and layout of the newsletter and how to create a consistent layout and look and feel that will serve a newsletter well across multiple issues and from one issue to the next.   The result for Affinity will be a standardized look and feel (ultimately in the form of a template) that they can use each time they create a new issue, with less production time and more readability for their subscribers.     

Step One:  Editorial Changes 

Our first suggestions involve a few editorial changes.   These will help provide a crisper layout and will help engage readers more quickly

• Shorter headlines and synpopses.   We see many clients use long, wordy headlines and synopses that are heavy paragraphs.  What happens with this approach is that readers tend to get stuck on one item and may not make it through the whole newsletter or to an item that could be of great importance to them.  Therefore, we often recommend to customers that they develop a guideline for headline and synopsis writing that involves a maximum number of words.  This helps anyone who is contributing an article to create headlines and summaries that are concise and intriguing to the reader.  A simple rule of thumb for a three-column newsletter like Affinity’s would be a maximum of 10 words for headlines and 20-25 words for synopses.   The benefit here is that the real estate of the Cover Page will be fully utilized and readers will have an easier time grasping the whole scope of the newsletter content.
  
• Less elements, with a more consistent positioning of them.  There’s a lot going on in The Connection, which is a good thing.  Unfortunately, readers may get easily confused and have a hard time figuring out where to go first.  To solve this issue, Affinity could develop a consistent positioning of the elements that they use from issue to issue such as the Archives, Subscribe Box, and the “more information” elements. 

We would also like to suggest including the Table of Contents (TOC) element and the Subscribe Box on the Article Pages.  The TOC will help readers navigate more effectively throughout the newsletter and the Subscribe Box on an Article Page would allow non-subscribers to sign up for the newsletter as soon as they read an article of interest.  

In addition, on the Cover Page, we would like to see the two “for more information” elements (“If you’d like to learn more…” and the logo with the 800 number and tagline) merged into a single more succinct element that links people to the Affinity web site where the services are described more completely.  This will focus more attention back on the articles which detail many of these services anyway.  It will also eliminate an element that now has five different links in it, something that could easily confuse a reader who’s trying to find a quick, simple way to get more information. 

• Headlines:  The layout of the The Connection may benefit from a smaller font size for the headlines.  The color chosen for the headlines is a good one since it echoes the masthead design and it will hold up well in a smaller size.  This font color should also be used on the Article Pages to create more uniformity within the newsletter. 
  
• Synopses and Body Copy.  In Affinity’s April issue, there were several different fonts used for the synposes on  Cover Page, some of which matched the Article Pages and some that didn’t.  We recommend using the same font throughout for these elements as it will help the overall readability of the newsletter.  In addition, with more consistent basic fonts like those used in synopses, other features can be emphasized with bold and/or italics. 

Step Three:  Navigational Links

Another area where we see a lot of varied applications are the hyperlinks that are throughout the newsletter.  What we see here in Affinity’s newsletter, and in many other newsletters as well, are links that have different typefaces, different roll (mouse) over colors, and different type sizes, to name a few of the variables.  This approach can be disruptive to the reader. 

A more consistent approach can be accomplished by editing the links much like you would font styles for headlines and article text as described in the “Creating a Template” section below and in the article "Get Your Rollovers in Harmony".

Step Four:  Templates 

We’ve suggested that consistency (sorry for the overuse of the term in this article, but it’s a key factor in increasing loyalty among your readers so it’s well worth emphasizing) is vital to a newsletter.   Once you decide what you want for style issues, such as a uniform type, color, and size of font, you can create a template that can be used issue after issue, simply by following the steps below.  These steps will provide you with a repeatable, consistent layout that you can use for any or all future issues. 

1. Select an issue you would like to use as the template for all future issues.  This can be an existing issue or if you don’t have an issue whose layout you would like to follow, create a new issue and follow these steps.
   
2. Once you have the issue you want to work on, go into the Layout Editor and click on “Page Layout.”  Here you can globally set up default font types, sizes, and colors that you want to use in both your Cover Page and the Article Pages of your newsletter.  To get to the elements you want to change, use the drop-down menu under “Default Text Styles.”  Choose the appropriate category, which in the case of Affinity, because we are talking styles that relate to the articles themselves, would be “Article Styles.”  You can then click on the “Edit” buttons for the element you want to change and select the font, color, and size that you'd like to use.   After you make the appropriate changes, you can then check the box “apply these settings to all template pages” at the top of the Layout Editor page to apply to the all other template pages as well.
   
3. If you happen want to override the fonts you chose under “Page Layout” for a particular article, you can do so from the Layout Editor.  Simply click on the article you want to change the font in (either “Multiple Article [Edit]” or “Single Article [Edit]) and make the changes there.  You can also format individual articles using the HTML editor.
   
4. When you have made all the standardization changes you want to make, the next step is to name this issue as a template.  You can do this from the “Edit Issue Properties” button on the Main Menu page.  Once on the Edit page, name the template in “Use Layout Template” and save.  You will now have a template that you can use issue after issue with consistent fonts, colors and sizes.  You are not, however, limited to one template.  If you have a special issue or what to create a unique look, you can create new templates following the same procedures as above.  You would just save it with another name. 

In Summary

For Affinity, once they spend a little time creating a template that has a look and feel they  feel comfortable with, they will be able to repeat this in a consistent manner for each and every issue they produce in the future.   Their production time will be reduced and they will have happier readers! 

Did this article help you?  Let us know…and if you have an issue you’re struggling with, tell us about it below and we’ll address it in a future article.