The Benefits of Sending e-Newsletters

emily September 7, 2014newsletters

If you’re looking for ways to keep your current customers satisfied and engaged, at the same time as promoting your services to prospective customers, then an e-newsletter could well be the way forward.

The 2014 Sign-up.To UK email marketing benchmark report saw an increase in both click-through rates and open rates from last year through email marketing, so can your business afford not to capitalise on this cost-effective marketing technique?

What are the Benefits of Sending e-Newsletters?

• Extremely cost-effective compared to print ads.

• Builds your brand and keeps you at the forefront of people’s minds.

• Strengthens loyalty in your existing customer base.

• Boosts traffic to your website.

• Builds your reputation as an authority voice in your industry.

• Increases sales.

How can You Make e-Newsletters Work for You?

• Only send your e-newsletter to people who’ve requested it; nobody likes spam!

• Don’t let your email be one of the ones that get deleted without being opened, your content needs to make recipients want to read it. How to achieve this? Make sure every single e-newsletter is packed full of relevant and valuable content such as news, special offers and subscriber competitions.

• Make it personal. If you use an email marketing service, you can often address the email personally to each individual, but take it from me, you need to make sure it’s correct. I’ve lost count of the emails I’ve received that have either ‘Mr Fowler’ or ‘[Recipient’s Name]’ where my name should be. That puts me off the brand straight away, so don’t let it happen to your customers.

• Another way to make it personal is to make sure you use your brand’s ‘voice’, and keep it consistent in each newsletter. If you’re a local business that prides itself on knowing your customers and being friendly, a stuffy, formal newsletter will go down like a lead balloon.

• If your business is e-Commerce, consider sending a ‘we miss you’ email to customers who haven’t bought from you in a while, with a special discount to entice them to come back.

• Make sure your e-newsletters reflect your brand in the right way. By hiring a freelance writer you can ensure your e-newsletter looks professional, contains correct spelling and grammar, engaging content and speaks to your customers in the right way.

How Often Should You Send an e-Newsletter?

Getting the frequency of your e-newsletters right can be tricky. After all, too often and you run the risk of annoying your subscribers, not regularly enough and they might just forget you. Weekly newsletters might be a good option for your business, but only if you have enough genuinely valuable content to fill a weekly newsletter, otherwise try fortnightly or monthly. It can often depend on your customer base, so why not try asking them how regularly they’d like to receive newsletters from you and take it from there?