Have you ever wondered why our team emails you about fall and even winter holiday newsletter editions in August — while you’re still getting a suntan?! Well, wonder no longer. We’re here to explain why our publication timeline operates so far in advance and how seemingly small delays can throw off months of work.
By understanding how our publication works, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how an effective newsletter is created, how to make the most of your Newsletter Pro team, and why your mail date is everything! Let’s get started.
The Creation Process: It All Starts With An Interview
You’re probably most familiar with this step. Our interviews rarely take longer than 15–20 minutes, but it can be tough to squeeze that amount of time into your busy day. That’s why we recommend picking a monthly weekday and time that you know will almost always work for you.
But, after your interview, what happens next in the publication timeline?
First, your project manager begins assigning writing, editing, and design tasks. Then, in most cases, writers will write your content within the next couple of days.
Next, their written content is tasked to your editor for editing — a necessary step for typos, grammatical errors, information accuracy, and overall polish.
Lastly, your designer is tasked with assembling your upcoming edition newsletter; applying all the written content to the page; and designing shapes, colors, and choosing pictures that may be necessary to make the content look more appealing and professional.
This seems fairly straightforward, but there’s one twist. Depending on the creative team’s workload at that time of the month, it can take up to a week to fit new tasks into their schedules. This is partially because of the different popularities of mail dates.
Not All Mail Dates Are Equal
Clients with timely interviews will never have to worry about their creative team falling behind. This is because project managers reserve spots on their creative team’s workloads ahead of time. However, when an interview falls through, these spots are often forfeited. Even when an interview is moved to the next day, it can sometimes jeopardize a campaign’s timeline.
This is especially true for certain weeks of the month rather than others. For example, many of our clients love their newsletters to arrive in mailboxes on the first day of the month. We love making that happen for you! However, it does mean that all of these campaigns follow a similar timeline and pattern for the creative team, and it can lead to their workload being tighter during those weeks.
This makes it harder to squeeze in last-minute additions or changes. That’s not to say it’s impossible, by any means! Yet, when needing to reschedule or set up an interview date, this can be great information to keep in mind. All of our clients can lean on their project managers or writers to help guide them through the best interview weeks for their campaign.
The “Timewarp” Effect
Ideally, your newsletter edition will take only two weeks to put together, from start to finish. When you add up all of these details, however, it can easily turn into a month- or two-month process. Maybe it’s a crazy week in your business and you don’t have time for an interview — or maybe the edition went through an extra round of revisions this time. Because we prioritize your publication timeline so highly, we work 1–2 months ahead of schedule to ensure your edition will always be on time, no matter what happens. There are many more details involved with mailing your newsletter on time. For example, this article doesn’t cover our production team’s detailed printing process either, but we’ll leave that topic for another day. If you have any questions about your mail date, creation process, or if you’d like to set up a regular monthly interview time, feel free to give us a call or email your team at ThePros@NewsletterPro.com!
Recent Comments