What is the purpose of a newsletter? Do I really need a newsletter? Love them or hate them; email newsletters are essential to the success of any business. They can be the best way to keep at the top of the mind of potential customers and existing ones. Offering a newsletter can be the start of one of your warm marketing strategies.
The first goal of an email newsletter is to continually provide updates regarding the business, product, or services. However, it should not be a hard-sell, rather a sort of update from a helpful friend and not a pushy salesperson.
Although this doesn’t mean that newsletters are only used to keep in touch, they can be used to motivate customers to take actions such as making a purchasing decision or to read your latest blog post.
In the last decade, email marketing has risen to dominate social media marketing, and according to research from McKinsey, marketers are 40 times more likely to receive new customers from email marketing than from Facebook and Twitter.
It, therefore, means building a successful email list is vital for your business. Marketers today agree that an email list is essential, and building a successful email list involves sending regular but useful email newsletters. They are the life force of any marketing campaign. So let’s find out more about what newsletters are.
What is a Newsletter?
A newsletter is a cost-effective solution that enables you to build regular communication with your customers and prospects. To run a successful email marketing campaign using newsletters, you need to offer your readers amazing content that proves useful and is relatable. It is essential to know that business users receive high volumes of material in their mailbox on a daily basis and thus are selective of what they open and may skim a newsletter for information than reading deeply.
Newsletters are not only a cheap way of reaching out consistently, but they are a fast means and produce data that can be analyzed and used to create better newsletters. The information that may be contained in an email newsletter includes information about multiple products or services, company initiatives, or sales info. This information, unlike what is obtainable on print or radio ads, is more detailed and lets businesses provide links directly to products. An email newsletter is a convenient sales channel that funnels customers directly to your website and helps build a strong email newsletter.
Benefits of a newsletter
There are many benefits with using a newsletter, and here are some:
Regular Communication
When you publish a regular newsletter, either daily, weekly, or monthly, your business is kept in front of the customers and prospects mind almost all the time. Maintaining regular contact is vital for any business that is operating in a competitive market and in times between purchases that seem to take long. Unlike large scale advertising that will include spending a couple of hundred and thousands, newsletters cost much less and are less intrusive compared to a visit from a sales representative or a call from a telemarketing agent.
Updates
Customers and prospects can be kept up to date with updates about your company through a newsletter. By designing high-quality content presented in a captivating manner, you can inform your audience on things like the release of a new product, special promotional offers, and your company’s participation in an exhibition or conference. Newsletters can also be used to inform customers about company sales results and the appointment of a new sales or service personnel. Keeping customers informed goes beyond just letting them in on what’s happening at your company, it also shows that they are valued and that’s a good thing.
Capability
One of the best mediums for displaying your company’s capabilities is by sending newsletters. You can showcase that your company understands the challenges and opportunities customers face by publishing articles reviewing recent industry researches and comment on important issues as well. These kinds of articles will show to them that you have technical expertise that positions, stand out as an expert in your field. Short case studies can also be published to show how you’ve solved problems for your customers before.
Relationships
You can build relationships with your customers as you regular furnish them with updates and high-value information. You demonstrate how your business can help customers improve their performance when you provide technical articles or business tips. This builds a sense of community and will most likely strengthen relationships more by encouraging customers to comment or contribute articles on content.
Customer Insight
When you analyze newsletter data, you can get insights into customer preferences and choices, which is helpful for offering more personalized service. There are email tools that can provide data on the number of newsletters that were opened, which can help you determine the appeal of each issue when you include links to more information in the articles, you can measure the response to the article. You can gain better insights into the needs of customers when you send newsletters and monitor through follow-up emails to readers.
Low Cost
Newsletters are generality a cheaper option of advertising than conventional advertising means. They cost almost nothing to produce and are sent electronically, eliminating the cost of printing paper and purchasing postage stamps. You don’t need to employ new staff to create a 2 or 4- page newsletter. Once you have determined the format and scope of the newsletter, you can produce better ones as time moves on.
Email Newsletter Marketing
Email newsletters are the best way to boost your social following or send traffic through your email to your site. With an estimated 4400% ROI, email newsletter marketing is one the most cost-effective marketing channel, which makes it one of the perfect ways for small businesses to stretch their marketing dollars and build an email list of genuine subscribers. This part of your email marketing strategy should not be underestimated.
With email newsletters, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the reader. Having subscribed to a company’s newsletter, they’ll want to have access to the best information and could quickly hit ‘unsubscribe’ if they see something wrong? Most subscribers to email newsletters don’t do this for the fun of it. They do it for a certain reason, which is usually based on seeing your proposition, offer, or what benefits your service or product or information is to them. This is why every newsletter must contain the necessary information to make it successful.
Creative Headlines: A headliner should be original enough to make the reader want to open the email. It should also not deviate from the content of the newsletter.
Value content: While the headline is creative, the content should offer value. Customers want to know what’s in it for them. A newsletter with a clear value proposition will have people signing up wanting to know more.
Properly Scheduled: The information you release to your target should be relevant and specific to the target audience and published at specific intervals that don’t make them look spammy.
Compelling Call to Action: If you want your newsletter to be effective in making readers subscribe and join your list, then you must include a strong call to action. For example, be upfront about telling them to subscribe to your newsletter. If you offer value and are proud of your newsletter, you can straightaway ask that they subscribe for more of that.
Cleanly Arranged: A cluttered newsletter will make leads confused and overwhelmed and unsubscribe or be disengaged.
Mobile Responsive: Most people are always on their mobile devices and use it to check email and shop online. Newsletters should be optimized so that they can read it on tablets, smartphones, and other handheld devices.
Newsletter Best Practices
Anytime you create and send a newsletter; there are specific guidelines that ensure you keep with the rules and do not over-communicate with your subscribers. If you don’t follow these industry best practices, you stand at risk of having a higher unsubscribe rate, and worse, you might have your email marketing tool suspended.
There a few important guidelines to follow to ensure you are doing the right thing with your newsletter email marketing.
Here are a few of them, but not limited too:
Do not hide that people will be subscribing to your email list when using sign-up forms and landing pages for capturing email addresses. (The best way around this is to provide them with a link to your privacy policy)
Do not spam as this can be offensive to people who are not interested in your product or service. Ensure that your list comprises of those who have signed up for it.
Do not over-communicate, but leave gaps between messages.
Do not send irrelevant and unhelpful content to people on your mailing list. If you do this, you will continue to receive high unsubscribes.
Do not make it difficult for people to unsubscribe.
Conclusion
Keep in mind that an email newsletter is not for you; it is meant for your recipients. So anything you do with it should make them feel comfortable and not pressured into anything. It should be used as a chance to deepen the relationship with your recipients better.
Newsletters offer a great opportunity to interact with your customers or colder leads and a chance to present to them useful content instead of another sales pitch. If you fill your newsletter with resources that matter to your recipients, then you’d have done a great job.
Whether you are turning to email marketing for your business advertising, empower yourself with this powerful tool. Try new things with this strategy, and as you go on, you will become more of an expert and have move fun on the way.
