Newsletters are an ever-increasing part of a company's public face. So Whitbread's Nikki Pates attended Writing Machine's Trade Secrets of Newsletters to find out how she could make them more effective.

Today, more and more companies are producing newsletters. With so many around it becomes harder (and of course more necessary) to make yours stand out from the crowd.

But writing that creates impact doesn't happen by chance. Blending a strong marketing message with readability is no mean skill.

To this end Writing Machine has set up its Trade Secrets of Newsletters course to give those in marketing positions an insight into the techniques and skills used by professional writers to create meaningful, incisive copy.

Brain-friendly

The course is run by two writers and is geared to interaction and group activity. Integral to this approach is the attention paid to so-called 'brain friendly' learning techniques.

For example, all modules are constructed and delivered to appeal to four types of learning styles identified by psychologists using the acronym, SAVI:

• Somatic - (through physical action): such people learn best by being given activities to do.
• Auditory - (through listening): such people tend to learn best by first listening and then discussing the topic with others.
• Visual - (through seeing): such people learn best by seeing concepts expressed visually.
• Intellectual (theory based learning): such people tend to respond well to being engaged on a more theoretical level.

The Writing Machine way of training ensures that every stage of the process addresses all of these learning types. As a result the learning is more effective, more memorable, and more helpful.

That, at any rate, is the theory. Fortunately, Nikki Pates, Communications Assistant for Whitbread Restaurants Division, who attended the workshop recently, tends to agree.

"They really keep you on your toes. Instead of just blinding you with jargon they took the time to show how things would work in a real life situation.

"Often when you go on a course, you are just given all the theory and you are left thinking, 'but how does this actually work?' On the Trade Secrets course there was always an activity to follow, or an example, or just a different way of explaining it."

The importance of preparation The workshop is designed to give learners a variety of skills which are required to make any newsletter stand out from the crowd. These include techniques for adding pace and variety to the newsletter content, and using outlining techniques to sub-edit with both ease and speed.

But for Nicki Pates, the most important and useful aspect of the day was the time devoted to preparing what to do before the writing even begins. "Planning and structuring a newsletter is as vital as entertaining content," she said. "In fact, without knowing your audience and what you want to say to them, it is nigh-on impossible to target your writing effectively.

"By introducing such techniques as flatplanning and outlining, the Trade Secrets of Newsletters course has given me so much more control of the editing process."