eNewsletters are Still a Strong Way to Connect with Prospects and Customers
Recently, I recommended to a client of ours that she send out a monthly newsletter. Her reply was, "Why?" I sent her the list of reasons outlined below.
What do you think? Are eNewsletters still relevant or are they a waste of time?
1. Staying In-Touch
Email newsletters are still a very strong way to stay in touch with current, past and some potential customers. There are very few ways to deliver information from your company right into someone's mailbox (physical or electronic).
2. Staying Relevant
One objective of marketing is to keep your brand relevant. eNewsletters are an effective way to keep your brand in front of people who know who you are and "support" your company. They may contact you again and/or they may refer others. Even if someone deletes the eNewsletter without opening it, they are still seeing your email address, your company name and the subject. This is an "Impression" which has value. Maybe they are too busy to open this month's newsletter but they will open a newsletter that you send at sometime in the future.
3. They Are Asking for It
Everyone on the eNewsletter list has opted-in which means that they want information from you. If they don't want the information from your company, they can unsubscribe.
4. Obligated (to some degree)
This is just my opinion, but I feel companies have some degree of obligation to inform and educate their "audience" of issues, trends, solutions, and new developments.
5. Easy to Measure
eNewsletters are easy to track. We know the number of subscribers, the open rate, and the click rate. These are all great measures and metrics that we evaluate the response to information we are sending to our "audience".
6. Inexpensive
eNewsletters are cheap to prepare and to deliver. Compared to costs like Google AdWords, eNewsletters are very cheap. This is especially true if you are reusing existing information from blogs and social media.
7. Results
Typically, the open rate for eNewsletters is about 30%. Click-through rates back to the website are about 7%. If you have 1,000 people on your list then that is 300 people who at least opened the eNewsletter and about 70 people who clicked back to your website.