A newsletter is an economical medium to build relationships with customers and to maintain regular contact with them.
Under Newsletter marketing companies send across product and company focused information through an emailed letter to a set of subscriber list. These lists contain all the potential and existing customers. Newsletters are used by online businesses to improve their brand recall value, establishing their position in the category or field and to inform the consumers regarding their products.
A few reasons why a company should add newsletter marketing in their marketing strategy:
AWARENESS
A newsletter helps a company in increasing awareness and understanding of their products and services. Generally most customers and prospects gather very little knowledge or information regarding your company and what it offers through advertisements and emails. By sending a newsletter you help them see the bigger picture.
PROMOTION
Newsletters are most effective in promoting products and services or launching new products. They can help in passing information on special offers, helping in reinforcing the effect of various advertising and promotional campaigns.
CONTACT
Sending newsletters regularly over a period of time helps you to maintain a contact and rapport with customers and prospects. If customers are not buying your products frequently, you can this contact through newsletter between purchases will help you in building a strong relationship and offer a new sales opportunity.
How to Develop an Effective Newsletter:
Innovative headlines: Subject lines of the newsletter should be innovative and attractive, it should lure the reader to open it and read it.
Appropriate and regularly scheduled: Information in the newsletter should be specific and appropriate to the target audience. They should be published in regular intervals to stay in constant contact with the consumers.
Call to action: Every newsletter should be written in a way which will require the reader to perform a desired action.
Uncluttered format: The content of the newsletter should be clear. The format should be simple, if the content is confusing or overwhelming, there are high chances your newsletter will be unsubscribed.
Mobile responsivenes: Most people now use mobile devices to check their email and for shopping online. You need to make sure that the newsletters are optimized for tablets and smartphones.
Motivations: Rewards, offers or coupons will attract consumers to opt for the newsletter marketing, and at the same time make some purchases.
Terms and Conditions: The readers want to know how their personal information will be used if they sign up for a newsletter. Inclusion of a link to your privacy policy will reassure them that their data won’t be misused or shared.
Effective Newsletters should not be Sales-Driven
Web users are frequently bombarded with various offers and promotions. This puts off a reader as they are already too exposed to such promotion. To get them to open and read your newsletter you need to ensure the content is genuinely interesting. The content should go beyond an attempt to actually sell or promote your products or services. Readers will only open an email which is targeted towards educating or entertaining them. Subject line plays a major role here. To keep up to the expectations it is necessary to actually follow the subject’s matter in the newsletter content inside.
Best Methodology:
The best method in creating a newsletter is to follow 90/10. Which means 90% information and only 10% sales material. By achieving the right balance, this educative newsletter will bring in more sales than a product copy.