5 reasons newsletters are a powerful marketing tool.
Posted by James, 5 November 2021 (5 minute read)
In this modern world of emails, online marketing and social media, newsletters can feel a bit outdated. They’re longer than most short-form advertising and – as a result – take time to write, produce and distribute.
But when done properly, newsletters are a powerful marketing tool. So in this week’s JW’s Thoughts of a Copywriter, I’m giving you 5 reasons why newsletters can make a real difference to your business, help retain customers and improve sales of your products or services.
What is a newsletter?
A newsletter is usually a printed report sent to customers, employees or other interested people by a company or business. Newsletters tend to contain news, activities and information about the company or business and are generally designed to inform their readers.
Newsletters were traditionally sent by mail to customers and employees. But more recently, e-newsletters have increased in popularity – usually sent by email to agreed mailing lists and subscribers.
Newsletters are either used to bring in new clients and customers or engage with existing ones. The audience is usually clearly defined and plays a big part in the angle of the stories and entries that are written. Some newsletters are B2B (business-to-business) and some are B2C (business-to-consumer).
Another important element of an effective newsletter campaign is its regularity. They can be produced daily or weekly – but most are published and sent monthly or quarterly.
Why newsletters are a powerful marketing tool
Newsletters take time to produce. For example, a copywriter will often take longer to produce content for a newsletter than they would for a piece of short-form advertising. There are also significant production costs, as many businesses require a designer to put together the copy and include relevant images (or even videos in e-newsletters).
The cost of distribution – and the time this distribution takes – are other factors to consider with newsletters. But the e-newsletter has helped enormously with this issue. It’s much easier and cheaper to send an email to a list of subscribers than it is to print, package and send hard copies. Here’s a great article that considers which is better when it comes to newsletters: print or email?
The time and cost of producing a quality newsletter might put you off using them. But I urge you to think again. Because newsletters are still a powerful marketing tool in 2021. Here’s why!
1. Newsletters promote higher engagement rates
On average, an e-newsletter has a 40% higher engagement rate than advertising on Facebook or Twitter. A study by Monetate found that a successful e-newsletter campaign leads to 4.24% of customers completing a sale. With search engines it’s 2.49% and social media comes in with a paltry 0.59%.
And as you can see, the DMA has also found that almost 70% of all marketing emails are either ‘regularly’ or ‘occasionally’ opened with a click-through to a corresponding website. This means newsletters are certainly able to provide you with high levels of engagement when it comes to both new and existing customers.
Put simply, these impressive stats have to be considered and balanced against the costs of producing a quality newsletter. Because you’ll often get a higher ROI when compared to using cheaper forms of advertising on social media or search engines.
2. Newsletters effectively build (and sustain) customer relationships
Unlike shorter forms of advertising, newsletters are designed to help build and sustain relationships with your customer base. Here, the regular – but not overly regular – emailed or posted newsletter appears far less intrusive than constant adverts on television, radio and social media.
With newsletters, you can equally take time to build relationships, be more personal and increase trust in both your brand and any specific products or services.
3. Newsletters build better dialogue with your customers
Newsletters are a powerful marketing tool when it comes to building better client or customer dialogue. You can include surveys, pieces that require feedback or even promote an event where customers can speak to you directly.
Feedback is one of the most important ways to grow your business. Without listening to the people who buy your products or services, you’ll quickly run into trouble. And newsletters are a great way of giving your customers a voice and promoting a constructive dialogue with them.
4. Newsletters make your customers feel special
Advertising can often feel incredibly impersonal – it simply tells potential customers about a great offer anyone can get. But with newsletters and e-newsletters, you’re able to get really personal. For example, e-newsletter campaigns can be personalised to the point of including the customer’s name in the subject line or start of an email.
When customers feel special, they’re much more likely to purchase from you. And with any luck, they’ll do it again and again and again!
5. Newsletters encourage return visits and more sales
A successful newsletter campaign is much more likely to increase return custom and / or visits to your website. And as I’ve discussed in a recent post about the importance of SEO, return online visitors will quickly boost your Google ranking.
Return custom is the lifeblood of any business. Virtually no business survives on single purchase customers, so you’re always going to need people to keep buying what you’re selling.
Most business websites see about 30-40% of visitors clicking through as ‘return customers’. So a regular e-newsletter means you can boost this number and promote immediate returns to your website. Printed newsletters are also shown to be a great way of prompting previous customers to buy from you again.
Do you currently send out a regular company newsletter? If so, I’d love to hear about it – comment below, tell me over on Twitter (@JWCopywriting) or send me a message on Facebook.
Speak soon,
JW