Every so often you should think through how and why you are communicating the way that you do. The ultimate goal of a client communications program is what? To keep your clients up to date with what you are thinking? Or to help the clients understand what you offer?
Yes, those are significant goals. But are they the ultimate goals? Some might say the goal is to sell, but if it is, then the communication won't last. People will unsubscribe, or stop reading, if all you are doing is selling.
Take it down to the core reasoning for communicating. The fundamental reason to communicate with clients (beyond the communication you do in the day to day delivery of your service) is to build and maintain an ongoing connection - to keep the bonds strong.
Isn't that the key motivation? If you think about it that way, then the ultimate goal is to keep clients feeling connected to you, the professional, or to you the business. There's no gray areas at the fundamental basic level. It's black and white. The goal of your communications expenditures is to keep the clients around!
So, if that is true then your communications program should be in support of helping your clients stay with you. Whatever reasons there are for staying with you have to logically be tied back to how you communicate.
In the professional services arena, assuming your professional services are adequate to hold your clients loyalty, clients choose to stay with you for the long term because they respect you, they like you, they are comfortable with you, and they find you interesting.
In other words, if you can bear to admit for a minute that your professional services are almost a commodity, then the real glue in your client relationships is you - do your clients enjoy you enough to stay with you.
So, I am asking you to carefully consider how you spend your money on your client communications. If you are sending out sterile newsletters you didn't write, but have your picture on the top right corner - then you are wasting your money.
If you are sending out anything to your clients that is not clearly from you, or written by you, and does not contain your 'voice' in the communication, then it truly is a total waste of money.
Whatever you do in the client communications realm, be sure to do as much as possible by yourself. If you don't, and choose to let some ghost writer do it for you, then you are diminishing your personal brand.
To the client reading something not written by you, but sent as if it is from you, it is clear you are very obviously making a token effort. They know you didn't write that. And if they know that, what are they thinking in addition to that conclusion? The answer is they are thinking you have nothing to say of original value.
From the clients' point of view, getting a newsletter paid for by you that was clearly written by Marketing and edited by Compliance, and is totally devoid of the real you - is exactly the same as receiving a Season's Greetings card with nothing but a Hallmarkian platitude. It's an insult. It means - "Hey, at least you are on my mailing list!" That's not good enough. There is no bonding value. In fact it may well have a negative effect on your client relationships.
