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Free Internet Marketing & Newsletters |
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Here you will find information on what newsletters are, why you should use them, and what they require of you.
First, What is an E-Newsletter?
If you use email on a regular basis, you’re probably already receiving
E-Newsletters from some of the companies you do business with. And
while there’s a tremendous amount of variation out there regarding what
constitutes an E-Newsletter (or “electronic newsletter” or “E-zine” or
“email newsletter”; they are all the same thing), they do have certain
elements in common.
First and foremost, E-Newsletters arrive in your inbox as email
messages. The sending company writes the newsletter, drops into a
predetermined email format, and it sends it to a list of people who
receive it on the other end. There’s a fair amount of technology that
runs in the background to do this efficiently and effectively, but when
you boil it all down, its just an email sent to many people at once.
To dig a bit deeper, think of an E-Newsletter like an electronic magazine, with three principal pieces:
1) Content. The words themselves-what you write and how you write it
2) Formatting and Layout. Like a magazine, an
E-Newsletter has a consistent look from month to month for organizing
and laying out the content. Fonts, graphics, sections, headings, links,
etc., all come together to create the design layout.
3) Delivery and List Management. Once the
newsletter is assembled (content + layout), there needs to be a
“machine” for sending it out to a predetermined recipient list). The
machine takes care of the logistics behind the delivery. In addition to
sending the newsletter out, that includes things like adding/removing
names; managing bounced emails; sending automated messages to readers
as they come on the list or make changes to their personal information;
and collecting and reporting on data regarding behavior and preferences.
Taken together, these three elements make up an E-Newsletter.
Why Publish an E-Newsletter?
“ The cost of acquiring a new customer can be as much as 5 times the cost of keeping an old one.” (source: Peppers and Rogers).
“A 5% increase in retention yields profit increases of 25 to 100 percent” (source: Bain and Co.)
"Permission e-mail campaigns are ten times more effective than direct mail campaigns.” (source: IMT Strategies)
The results of this research and dozens of other studies add up
to a simple conclusion: It’s a lot more cost effective and profitable
to grow your business by increasing revenue and referrals from existing
customers, then it is to keep chasing strangers. If you’ve got a “house
list” of business relationships, you’ve got an extremely valuable
asset. An asset that a quality E-Newsletter is perfectly suited to take
advantage of.
Specifically…
An E-Newsletter Increases Lead Generation and Cross Selling. As
your newsletter arrives month after month, it keeps you in mind with
your customers, prospects, partners, and others, and provides an
ongoing, low-key mechanism for highlighting your full range of products
and services.
An E-Newsletter Increases Customer Lifetime Value. Competitors
can buy their way into your market by matching your pricing, matching
your products and even matching the look and feel of your company. What
they can’t buy are your relationships. Every newsletter that you send
serves to solidify the connection between your company and your
customers.
An E-Newsletter Provides A Low Cost, Instantaneous Channel For Sending Messages.
Your database of email addresses gives you instant access to your
customers and prospects. Once the machine is set up, in addition to
sending an E-Newsletter, you can send alerts, advisories, and messages
as frequently as you wish.
An E-Newsletter Opens Up A Two-Way Dialogue With Customers And Prospects.
E-Newsletters allow recipients to easily and immediately interact with
you. Comments are made, information is requested, an exchange of ideas
between you and your customers flows easily in both directions.
An E-Newsletter Hypercharges Your Existing Marketing Efforts.
Your E-Newsletter doesn’t compete with your website, print newsletter
or existing marketing materials. It leverages them. It creates a steady
pulse and focus that ties your other marketing efforts together.
An E-Newsletter Provides Instant, Measurable Results.
Advertising, sponsorships, and many other traditional marketing tactics
offer few options for measuring the return of your investment. E-based
tactics on the other hand, are instantly trackable.
If you already send printed materials out to your contact list -
whether as a print newsletter or in some other fashion – the most
immediate and measurable benefit of switching to an electronic format
is a savings in time, printing and mailing costs. With a variable cost
per newsletter of nearly zero, you will never again have to weigh the
benefits of printing more materials or agonize over whether or not
person X is “worthy” of the cost of sending information.
What About SPAM and Privacy Concerns?
The hottest topic in email marketing today is SPAM. As corporations and
Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) work to control the amount of
unsolicited email entering their systems, they may inadvertently filter
out legitimate emails, including some E-Newsletters. In industry
lingo, this type of error is called “false positive”, and the result is
some emails sent to people who have requested them don’t ever reach
their destination.
But, Lets put that into perspective. Even with SPAM’s impact, a good
E-Newsletter sent to your house list will still be opened by over 40%
of the people it’s sent to. Given typical response rates to traditional
marketing tactics, that’s as much as 40% better than the percentage of
people who read your newspaper ads; respond to your direct mail; or
return unsolicited phone calls.
The fact is, for the small business owner, an E-Newsletter represents
the first time in history that we’ve ever been able to cost effectively
communicate with our entire customer prospect base over and over again.
Not only that, but thanks to the inherently democratic nature of email
(i.e. the big boys don’t get any more space in the inbox than the rest
of us), an E-Newsletter gives us the opportunity to not just compete
with, but outperform our much larger competitors for the attention of
readers.
And so, while SPAM has certainly reduced some of the effectiveness of
E-Newsletters in recent months, this remarkable tool is by no means
past its prime.
How Much Time and Money Does It Require?
The answer depends on a few things:
First of all, there’s the content. The more you write by
yourself from scratch – as opposed to compiling from other sources, or
farming out to other writers - the more time it will take.
Although it’s less expensive to write original content, you’ll want to
assess whether you’ve got the resources in-house to put it all together
each month.
Next you’ll want to consider design. For maximum
effectiveness, your E-Newsletter should reflect your unique brand and
style. While you can customize a standard template, your best result
will be obtained by creating a look and feel that’s just for you (i.e.
using a professional designer).
Finally, there’s monthly production: formatting the content and
getting it out the door on a regular basis. Here too, you’ll want to
weigh the benefits of doing it yourself (less expensive) vs. hiring a
firm such as ours to manage the details for you (less worry and error).
As a rule of thumb, if you do the work yourself, you should figure on
two full days of work per newsletter - one day to develop the content;
one day to manage the layout and delivery logistics. You should also
count on the first newsletter taking an additional two or three days to
develop the format and style.
Newsletter Conclusion
Pound for pound, an E-Newsletter offers the small business owner an
opportunity to reach out to customers and prospects in ways that were
simply not possible just a few short years ago. Whether you do it
yourself, farm out the entire process, or strike a balance in-between,
this new tool is well worth adding to your repertoire.
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