Is Emailing Newsletters Still Relevant Today? Perhaps less than you think. For the past several years newsletters have been an important way to deliver content for our clients but we may be past the tipping point of their efficacy. This is because we receive too many of them to read them all. And in our emerging “stream economy” this tactic may be unaligned with the way people today are absorbing content.
A Little History Lesson
When email marketing was still evolving and on the ascend we encouraged clients to engage their target audience with newsletters. It was a great way to build relationships because you could demonstrate new products or services, share what your company or your people were doing in the community, and provide events listings. The addition of really nice photography made it visually appealing, too.
We could put so much information in a newsletter: articles, editorial, images, video, surveys, polls, events. Newsletters seemed to be the ideal way to foster interest. We could even promote new subscribers through automated sharing! And all those links in and out really impacted search engine optimization at that time.
A well designed newsletter looked professional and provided enhanced credibility for many businesses.
All good things must come to an end
Gary Vaynerchuk recently spoke at Inbound 2012, the preeminent conference on inbound marketing held in Boston. Gary made many interesting points but his comments about marketers ruining every good idea really struck a chord. Marketers take every great new concept and suck the life out of them through overuse or in some cases misuse. This may very well be the case with newsletters.
Watch Gary’s talk about his concept of the stream economy and how he believes, as a culture, people absorb content today. Our team members at Zen Marketing are finding every day that Gary’s points about “micro content going to rule the day” is spot-on, and marketing tactics going forward need to realize this and take advantage of it.
A Shift in Delivering Content
Our clients are seeing a great response to taking the very same content they previously used in their newsletters and positioning it into blog posts as separate articles on their website.
Blogging is a great way to communicate with an audience. The reader can choose what he/she wishes to read and not waste time wading through the unrelated or unappreciated material. Best of all to the publishing business, when content is written and structured properly people searching for information on the web can find your articles through organic search, thus expanding your marketing reach.
The blog articles may not always be keyword driven enough to satisfy the savvy filters on modern inbound marketing platforms (we recommend the Hubspot® platform, use it ourselves, and are a Hubspot® certified partner) but the key here is to make it relevant to the intended audience.
If you are new to blogging, you might enjoy reading our article on blogging and why this important marketing/SEO process must be respected in today’s internet-driven environment.
Email still plays an important role on the outbound marketing side, side by side with social media. These provide measurable distribution processes and are used to announce the new content, which brings interested readers to your website. Your reader gets some (hopefully) compelling information, your site traffic gets a boost, and your overall message is enhanced. Plus use of this approach allows your top of mind awareness to be further enhanced and developed.
Zen Marketing is a Constant Contact® partner and we use this powerful platform for our clients every day. We have just refocused our use of this important delivery system to better align with the behavior of our client’s target audience.
Even print can play a role- mailing a relevant article is a great way to follow up a face-to-face meeting with a prospect or client.
Shifting your investment of time and talent from newsletter creation into blogging will provide a better reading experience, fits well into the emerging stream economy, and requires much less work than pumping out entire newsletters.
The right marketing partner can show you how to further leverage your blog content and expand your marketing reach. You’ll get better engagement with your known audience plus create opportunities to become known with people seeking information, products, or services.
