Five paths to email newsletter success

January 08, 2003 |

An inherent part of the "marketing dance" is an exchange of value, and email newsletters as a marketing device are no exception. The most effective kind of value is relevant, timely content.

A previous column provided five reasons that businesses should consider creating an email newsletter. In this column, we discuss five paths to email newsletter success.

Segment your audience
It may be important to have multiple newsletters to serve your audience. If you are a pharmaceutical company, you may want a consumer-focused newsletter and a physician-focused newsletter - for each product! Financial services companies may have several newsletters based on the sophistication of readers. Media companies often create different newsletters for different sections of their site (for instance, a monthly “entertainment” newsletter, a weekly “world news” newsletter, and a daily “weather” newsletter). One-size-fits-all solutions are unlikely to do the trick.

Use feedback to keep the debate lively
Email newsletters allow for easy two-way interaction. Use polls and feedback buttons to take the pulse of your audience, and make them feel engaged in the process. “Ask the editors” features tend to be enormously popular.

Keep your promises
Audiences (especially online) are sensitive to the explicit and implicit promises you make. It’s easy enough to live up to the explicit ones (need I mention that sharing an email list with marketers in violation of a privacy policy is a no-no?), but the implicit promises are just as important. If you’ve promised value, deliver it. If you’ve promised regularly scheduled updates, don’t skip any. Finally, be aware that even features and design represent an implicit promise: don’t take away a column or change the design radically and expect readers not to notice.

Provide real value
An inherent part of the “marketing dance” is an exchange of value, and email newsletters as a marketing device are no exception. In exchange for your reader’s valuable time, you must provide something of equal or greater value in return. This value can take many forms (special offers/discounts, alert services), but the most effective kind of value to provide in the newsletter medium is relevant, timely content. By acting as a “filter” of relevant content for your audience, you save them time - and they will repay you many-fold with their attention. Be forewarned: the quickest way to torpedo an email newsletter project is to neglect this crucial step.

Choose your system wisely
In order to follow the best practices laid out above, you must have a system that supports your efforts, and at reasonable cost to boot. At a minimum, the system should support workflow (so that multiple contributors can easy create content), “template-based” publishing (so that content need not be manually put into HTML and text formats), and email list management (allowing users to easily subscribe and unsubscribe). A well-designed system will make your newsletter endeavors effortless.