A client recently asked my opinion of online newsletters. While blogs seem to be the main focus these days there are still benefits of offering a newsletter. It can be a great way to keep in touch with your clients and can help your prospects get to know you, and your business, better. You can use it to announce company news, new products and services or offer advice.
If you’re considering offering a newsletter keep in mind the following:
- What’s in it for your readers? How do you make it compelling so that they subscribe – and read it regularly?
- How often are you planning to send it out? Weekly, fortnightly or even monthly? Whatever you decide remember if you send it out regularly, and on time, your readers will come to expect, and look forward to it.
- Make sure you give your readers the ability to subscribe/unsubscribe easily.
- It’s vital you include a privacy policy. Make sure it’s easily seen and understood by potential subscribers.
Newsletters can be a great communications tool. Just remember your readers have chosen to read your newsletter so make it easy to subscribe, be informative and treat your reader’s details with respect.
I’d previously wondered how useful newsletters were still, with all the spam email people receive these days. but in my current work place, I see they are used quite heavily still. Maybe not as heavy as some people like to think, but of the thousands of emails sent out, a good few are being read.
Recently looking at the Feedburner service, I thought it was interested that they allow people to subscribe to RSS feeds by email. So when an RSS feed from something like a blog is updated, it sends out an email.
I thought it was a nice crossover between the blog/RSS feed, and newsletter ideas.
Good observation, Adrian. You can also create a newsfeed for your Newsletter collection if you’re producing them on a fairly regular basis. Those who prefer to scan newsfeeds will then be alerted when your latest Newsletter has appeared.
Thanks for the comments guys. 🙂
I don’t think newsletters are for every business but there’s definitely a market there. For certain products and/or services, or demographics, having a blog (for all their benefits) may not be that useful. Having a newsletter to communicate with customers and prospective customers can still work well.