Secret of Successful E-Mail Newsletters
September 22nd, 2009 by
Many clients ask what the point of an e-mail newsletter is and how it can help them grow their business. Will people read it? Will it clog up potential customer inboxes? How much is it?
There are several reasons I recommend e-mail newsletters. Not only do they provide free information, they are also one of the least expensive and most effective tools to draw attention to a site. Below are some additional advantages to implementing a company e-mail newsletter.
Stay in Touch
Stay in contact – Keep your business top of mind to your customers so that when they need a service you provide, they will contact you. Newsletters serve as a reminder to customers to come back to your site.
Develop relationships and trust – You become familiar to your subscribers. Familiarity encourages return visits and establishes customer loyalty.
Promotional tool – A great way to communicate new products and announce new services. Specials or discounts are a way to attract customers back to your site. Offers entice subscribers who may not necessarily need the service but will be prompted to act during a special.
Increase site traffic – Again, good to send out when launching a new product or service. Gives subscriber a reason to visit the site, helping drive additional traffic .
Set specific delivery time – Complete control of when information is disseminated.
Trackable – Use the newsletter as a research tool to see what people read about most and what they are most interested in hearing about. Research will allow you to write a newletter for a specific target audience.
Provides immediate results – Real time statistics and data provide you with the information needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the newsletter. Tweak future newsletters from that information.
When developing your newsletter consider the following:
- Content has to engage readers. Articles should be more informative and less like an advertisement.
- Keep articles brief.
- Use images to attract reader’s attention.
- Use links and provide URL’s as additional resources.
- Frequency is key. Stick to a regular schedule. Try to send out same time every month or week.
So if you are looking for a cost efficient way to target and reach a large group of customers or potential customers, consider an e-mail newsletter.
E-mail newsletters have incredible potential to get your message across directly to the consumer, but often it gets misconstrued as a way to just send an advertisement without any thought to why people should even bother to open it! I had managed a live music venue and ran all new media advertising for it, including a very successful e-mail blast campaign. With targeted, regular, and modest newsletters, I was able to track conversions and would almost always notice a jump in ticket sales following a campaign.
For example, if we were advertising a pop-rock show, we would target the blast to go to only people who had bought pop-rock tickets over the last few years. Patrons who liked heavy metal would never open a “Backstreet Boys” e-mail, and, subsequently, brand-trust would be lost. We would target the campaigns just for the relevant audience.
I also ran a regular newsletter that would be sent out every Tuesday (one of the best days to send a campaign out to achieve higher open rates.) This included a general show listing, new show announcements, etc. I noticed that regular blasts filter out those who are not interested, and observed continually higher click-through rates for these.
Lastly, I think it’s very important to stay modest in these E-mail blasts. If even the subject reads like an advertisement then people will likely skip over it. I would make sure articles were short and to the point. If they wanted to read more, I would always include a link to provide them with more information. The less gimmicky the E-mail campaign is, the better results you get.
All-in-all, I think E-mail newsletters have incredible potential for a company. These days people are very careful about what brands they associate with, so it’s a great way to get your company noticed and keep clients coming back.