A case study in today’s MarketingSherpa provides some great content tips for your newsletter based on the experiences of the National Association of Realtors.

The first and most important tip is to make your content all about the the reader - solve their problems or make them money. When time and attention are limited, your newsletter should offer obvious benefits right up front.

Next, they found that offering their informative content in creative but clearly-defined ways really engaged their readers. What is a "creative but clearly-defined" format? Well, they didn’t call anything an "article." Instead, they have several formats for content:

• Quizzes: Not just your ordinary quiz, though. When you get to your score, each answer has a paragraph or two explaining why particular answers were right or wrong.
• Coaching: A pool of regulars take turns writing tutorials on various topics in the realms of Sales and Architecture.
• Advice: A fairly standard advice column-type feature allows subscribers to pose questions for the expert to answer for them. Real feedback on real challenges.
• Tool Kits: For folks new to the business, they have a number of tutorials and tool kits available and they spotlight one in each newsletter.
• They do the same thing with customizable handouts and checklists that their subscribers can download. Although all of these tools are always available from the website, each newsletter issue highlights just one of each.

And finally, the headlines and summaries for each of these types of features is consistently crafted to be instantly recognizable and to clearly communicate the benefit of reading the full feature. Thus, the reader can easily locate their favorite features and identify useful topics.

Summed up: Information Accessibility