You thought email newsletters were a marketing tool of the past? Replaced by social media? Think again. Newsletters can be highly effective—much more so than social media—especially for B2B audiences. So don’t leave them out of your media mix.
Why do newsletters still work?
Social media is passive. Even if your audience members do visit a social platform, they may or may not see your posts, especially at the rate messages fly by. Email, however, is more active. Everyone checks email, and the reader must actively choose to ignore, delete, or open your message.
So if you’ve got a catchy subject line and interesting lead article, you have a much better chance of engaging your audience through an email newsletter instead of a social media post. Unless your top prospects and customers happen to be Twitter-holics, anxiously awaiting your next tweet. Doubtful.
In addition to being seen by businesspeople, newsletters are a great way to drive traffic to your site (which Google loves, and so will reward you with better rankings). Google uses traffic, engagement, and conversions on your website as part of its ranking algorithm. That means if you’ve posted new content to your website, such as an article or resource, emailing your customers and subscribers and linking them through to it is a great way to drive people to your site, resulting in brownie points from Google.
Your number-one email marketing strategy must be to deliver value
I’ll give you some other pointers about newsletter structure and content; however, your number-one goal should be to deliver value. If it doesn’t add value, don’t include it in the newsletter.
Keep in mind that different things catch different people’s attention. Some people will be looking to learn something new. Others might be looking for something free. Still others are nosy, like Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched, and want to hear all the latest gossip about your team. So, for a general newsletter, the best content strategy is to have a mix of content that will appeal to a wide range of people.
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