The online newsletter continues to confound and perform after decades of relentless community building and information sharing. It has been called the cockroach of the Internet, the goose that laid the golden egg, tried-and-true, a direct line of communication, old-school artifact, the workhorse of nonprofits, and, perhaps most eloquently, “hand-curated pipes for mainlining quality Internet directly into our veins.” (Thank you for that, The Kernel.)
As a vein-clogging, direct line into our email inboxes, the online newsletter is a tool that will build your business and develop your brand image. Despite the Snapchatters and Whatsappers and Instagrammers out there, there is a time and a place where emailing your online newsletter is without rival.
Here are five reasons you can’t do without an online newsletter:
1. It’s easy to personalize and customize as part of your marketing plan.
Competing with Facebook isn’t so hard with a personalized newsletter. When you customize your newsletter so it contains personalized recommendations, the reader’s name, and reader-designated content, you’re more likely to keep your audience’s attention.
Newsletters tend to come before everything else in terms of self-interest. As David Carr writes in The New York Times, “It makes sense. My personal digital hierarchy, which I assume is fairly common, goes like this: email first, because it is for and about me; social media next, because it is for and about me, my friends and professional peers; and finally, there is the anarchy of the web, which is about, well, everything.”
As an addition to Facebook and other social media, the online newsletter is a way to personally connect with your audience and be an important part of your larger marketing plan.
2. It keeps your audience informed (and entertained).
Your newsletters are designed to do more than keep your readers connected. Your audience is reading to learn more and receive something valuable. Whether it’s helpful information, up-to-date news on your brand, or a discount or reward, your newsletter is an effective way to continue the relationship with ongoing communication.
By continuing to offer your audience something useful, you’re showing them that the’re valuable and haven’t been forgotten. You already know that your readers are interested because they’ve signed up for your newsletters, so be sure to give them something useful.
3. It’s a low-cost way to reach a large number of subscribers.
Small businesses and nonprofits can’t dispute the low-cost, pennies per message advantage to online newsletters. When you have a marketing budget, newsletters are the lost-cost choice over other marketing channels like direct mail and search engine advertising.
You can easily send out a new edition of your newsletter to a target audience of thousands of people, whenever you choose and as frequently as you want.
4. It’s a simple way to be mobile-friendly.
Without having to invest in new technology, you are instantly mobile-friendly with online newsletters. Email allows you to reach your audience on all types of mobile devices in an increasingly mobile-centric society.
A Forrester Research study shows that “on average, 42% of retailers’ email opens now happen on smartphones, up from 28% in 2013, while email open rates on tablets grew from 16% to 17%.”
When seeking mobile-friendly communication, texts are the competing alternative. But email newsletters are free to your audience where texts can incur a charge, and email gives much more space for your message in comparison to texts.
5. It’s the best way to grab your audience’s attention.
So what’s worth paying attention to when there is a never-ending supply of information? Most people are lazy when it comes to searching out content that interests them. By having it show up in their inboxes, reading content that your audience selected just got a lot easier.
No need to go looking for what they might like. Newsletters make sifting through the endless stream of online information easier for your readers. When your newsletter arrives, they recognize the sender, know you as a trusted source, and are confident that this is content they’re seeking.
If you like what you read, feel to share using our social media buttons!