I’ve read lots of articles on how to promote your business with newsletters or other similar mailers.  I’ve yet to see an article that has much value for jewelry businesses with advertising budgets under $2000/month. If you’re advertising budget is over $2000/month, you can afford to hire some people to create, publish, print and mail your newsletter just the way the articles recommend.  What about the rest of us?  I’ve learned the hard way and can really save you time and money.
   The jewelry industry has its own inherent problems that make newsletters difficult.  First and foremost, gems don’t grow on trees! You can use synthetics or buy in volume as the manufacturers do to create a “line” of jewelry that is relatively repeatable and standard.  If you do this as a local jeweler, you might as well close up shop.  Your clients want something unique they can’t buy at Macy’s and they’d probably rather not have to peel off the “Made in China” label before they wear it.  Once you commit to providing a unique product, you make your newsletter task doubly difficult.  Every newsletter is going to require new photos and new descriptions.  This can be time consuming and overwhelming if you don’t have a plan.  Since your inventory changes quickly and often, you must go from concept to mailing very quickly.  If the products you’re promoting are sold out or outdated by the time your clients get the mail, you’ve wasted your effort.

CREATE A TEMPLATE
   Although the content will change with every issue, you can make your life easier by creating a template. People like familiarity so once you create a template, stick to it so your clients get comfortable with where the information is and how to find it.  Not only does this help make your newsletter more useful to the client, it will save you lots of time on future issues.  Create headers, footers, boxes and graphics separately from your content so you won’t have to redo this effort next time.  Even borders and backgrounds can be reused if you plan ahead.
   As part of your template decide on the 3 or 4 fonts you’d like to use and stick to them.  Do the same for border styles and color schemes.  Too many fonts, borders and colors can really make your newsletter look messy.

PHOTOS
   Take the best photos possible, but be prepared to compromise some quality for speed and cost.  Remember that this is a newsletter that is designed to be friendly and personal.
   Since your advertising budget is small, you’ll probably want to take your own pictures.  This will save you a ton of money, but only if you keep it simple.  You should be able to find a lower end digital camera for under $500 that will do everything you need.  Ask around, borrow or try out different models to see how they work in your studio.  High end cameras with tons of features and settings are very time consuming and usually sensitive to light, angle and color changes.  Find a camera that takes good photos all the time without making too many adjustments.
   We use a Kodak DX7630 for our photos.  We’ve used better cameras and taken better pictures, but this camera takes good photos nearly every time without adjusting many settings.  Since we take 100’s of photos every week, we need to beefficient.  Depending on your business and the number of pictures you take, you may need to consider other features for your camera.

PRINTING
  If you want to keep your costs down, especially if you want color, you’ll need to do your own printing.  Printing services can be excellent for annual catalogs and brochures, but unless you have a huge mailing list, you’ll save lots of money printing your own newsletters.  Your standard home printer will not cut it so you’ll need to purchase a business printer.  You may spend $1000 on the printer, but it will pay for itself in printing savings within a short time. At about $0.35ea at Staples, it doesn’t take too many color pages to pay for your printer.  If you pick your printer carefully, your cost per page will run about $0.15 for color.
   You’ll have to weigh speed and quality versus cost, but for most situations a $700 to $1200 color laser printer should do the trick.  If you plan on doing multiple page flyers, consider 30+ pages/minute, duplex and stapling capability.  Most of the color lasers in the price range discussed will give you the speed, but two-sided printing and stapling will narrow the options considerably.
   We use a Konica-Minolta 3300DN for our newsletters.  It has been an excellent machine that has been a workhorse for us for a couple years.  They don’t make it anymore, but their 5670 model sounds like it will do everything the 3300 can and more.  We have had many Konica-Minolta printers over the years and been very pleased with every one.  Two years ago we became a distributor for them so we could get wholesale prices on supplies.  If you decide on a Konica-Minolta product, we’ll be happy to share our discount with you.