Why Have A Company Newsletter
A company newsletter is not going to be the ONE magical step to bring your fortune to your doorstep. Let’s be realistic. A newsletter, however, is definitely an important tool in helping you reach your goals. Right about now you are probably wondering why have a company newsletter?
If you are anything like me, you cannot help but dream of making six figures per year from your marketing business. When you daydream of the fancy vacations and the financial independence you hope to earn from your marketing business, you can almost taste the sweet life. It tastes a lot like mojitos on the beach, doesn’t it?
Well, the good news is that this dream can and does come true, and it can come true for you as well. The bad news is that it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes hard work and some long hours to make this dream happen. One way to get you started down the road to Cabo San Lucas is a newsletter.
A newsletter, properly executed, can amount to so much more than a drop in the proverbial bucket. It will bring you great results without much headache or expense. If you haven’t already created a newsletter, I recommend that you take a look at my post to see how it’s done.
Shall we take a look at how a newsletter can benefit your marketing business?
Direct Access
One way a newsletter can benefit your marketing business is that it allows you almost instant communication with your customers. Other forms of advertising may rely on merely the calculated likelihood that their customers or prospects will happen to come across their advertisements and marketing materials.
A newsletter, on the other hand, delivers the information you wish to communicate directly to the customer. There is little left to chance. Your advertisement is in their inbox, waiting for their pleasure to be opened and read at their leisure.
It is not haphazardly lingering on some webpage or associated site that your customer may or may not visit. A newsletter allows you direct communication with your customers.
Let’s continue with this point a step further. Not only does a newsletter allow you to reach customers, it allows you to reach customers who are already at least somewhat vetted.
At some point, they had to sign up for your newsletter. This indicates that they are already interested in what you have to offer. You do not have to wring your hands and waste your efforts trying to reach your target market.
Your target market has already defined itself to you. They’ve told you who they are and they’ve told you how to reach them. It is up to you to simply provide them the content and information that they desire. When someone subscribes to your newsletter, you are already one step up in the marketing game.
Customer Tracking
When you are the proud publisher of a newsletter you have the added benefit of being able to track your customers. I don’t mean this in any invasive “big brother” sort of way.
I mean you can look at your list of subscribers and gauge whether it is growing or shrinking. When you compare your number of subscribers to recent marketing ventures you can get sort of an idea of what is working and what is not working at all.
Perhaps the issue is where you advertise, how you advertise, or the content of your newsletter itself. If you make it simple for your customers to provide feedback, you can get an even clearer picture of your marketing strategy.
You can scrap or revamp what has proven to fail, fine-tune what is a moderate success, and learn much from what has yielded the most results. This wealth of information is not always available in other forms of marketing.
Freshness
Your email publication can also keep your brand or your business as fresh as daisies in the minds of your customers. Even if they do not open every issue of your newsletter, your presence is reassured to them with every issue sent.
If they are past customers, then you are constantly but unobtrusively reminding them of that great experience they had the last time they did business with you. If they are new or prospective customers, your brand or business is at the front of their minds when considering which company to offer their patronage to when the moment arises.
Even better, you are just a couple clicks away. There is no need to do a Google search and sort through thousands of results when they can just open up their email and there you are, waiting with a smile.
Loyalty
Newsletters are a keen way to create the bond of loyalty in your customers. You deliver them great content and important information week after week (or however often your newsletter goes out) and they will reward you for it.
You will become a stable and dependable fixture in a fickle and flighty modern age. You will become a familiar and trusted brand in their home as any of the other brands do which they are dedicated.
They see clearly that you are worthy of their trust by virtue of your longevity if nothing else. You obviously are not a fly-by-night operation launched by a money hungry schemer. You are there in their inbox, consistently assuring customers and clients that you are a well-managed and professional business with the skills and competency necessary to meet their needs whenever they arise.
You are in it for the long haul. You are there for them always. People really appreciate and respond to this sentiment in life as well as in business.
Personalize
Another added benefit of a newsletter is the fact that you can personalize and customize your ads as you wish. You can launch ads that are relevant to the “now”, to use a buzzword.
You can match your ads and promotions to holidays and traditions. For example, you could use a Christmas theme in December to connect your product or service to the holiday hoopla or offer some sort of back to school promotion.
You could even keep your ads topical by tying your newsletter to some recent headline. Just make sure you don’t tie in with something too controversial or too polarizing. You don’t want to exclude segments of your customer base in an attempt to be witty and current.
Social Media Compatibility
Now, to be perfectly honest, there has been some talk recently declaring the death of the newsletter at the hands of social media. This is, of course, absurd. The two marketing platforms can be used simultaneously and in conjunction with each other, and to great effect.
Calls to action on facebook and twitter to subscribe to your newsletter can be a boom to your business. You can also include in your newsletter all the necessary info to keep contact alive on these social media sites as well.
It should be noted that email is used by more people than facebook and twitter combined. To forgo the email newsletter and give all your marketing focus to social media could very likely prove to be a foolish and costly mistake.
Summary
E-newsletters are an unbelievable resourceful method for you to maintain ongoing communication with your customers and potential leads. People monitor their email inboxes several times a day. Since they have opted-in to receive your newsletters, it allows you a chance to build an exclusive connection with them. It also gives you an opportunity to stand out from the crowd.
In a nutshell here are some tips to let you know the value of having a newsletter.
- Helps to build customer loyalty.
- Keeps your business at the forefront so customers can’t forget about you.
- Affords you an opening to get to know customers better.
- Allow you to adapt your products and services according to what a customer actually wants from you.
- Saves you money by cultivating your leads and to expand marketing to those that follow you.
Sure, the newsletter is not the be-all-end-all in your marketing campaign. The newsletter alone is not a ticket to your vacation destination. There is no single marketing ploy that will automatically make your every wish come true.
The newsletter is, however, a cost-effective and efficient way to reach customers. A good newsletter is not going to get you a mansion on the hill. A newsletter will simply be a stone in its foundation.
Keep a strong and effective newsletter in your marketing arsenal. Combined with all your other efforts both in marketing and in day-to-day operations, your dreams really just might come true.
Now that I have answered the question ‘why have a company newsletter?’, it’s time to get the ball rolling! Compose a great newsletter, put that opt-in form on your website and give those potential customers a door to walk through! Then you can go get that mojito on the beach!
I would love to hear about your personal experience with using opt-in forms and newsletters. Did they help your business to improve?
Please feel free to contact me if you need help with anything. Just make a comment below or you can always get in touch with me through wealthyaffiliate.com (here is a link to my profile).
Verna
Founder of Your Trusted Affiliate
momstrustedaffiliate.com
email: verna@momstrustedaffiliate.com
Hi Verna,
I never knew how many positives there were to a newsletter.
I have only just started my new website but when it gets some traffic and firing on all cylinders I will definitely remember your post.
I sure could do with some guidance a long these lines.
Is it expensive to have this functionality on my site?
Regards,
Philip.
Hi Phillip,
If you by chance you know how to do website coding you could create your own opt-in form, but if not you can use a WordPress Plug-in called MailMunch that is free to create your opt-in form. Actually there are several free plug-ins that you could try. Just remember for any plug-in you use, make sure it says it’s compatible with the WordPress theme you are using and that it was recently updated. Don’t use ones that haven;t been updated in a long time because that indicates the developer doesn’t put much time into it.
You will also need to use an Auto-Responder. I recommend MailChimp (it’s free) if you have an e-commerce site where you sell products. I wouldn’t use it if you have an affiliate marketing site because affiliate marketers are banned from using their services. For your affiliate marketing site I recommend AWeber for your Auto-Responder. It’s not free for it’s fair cheap for a limited amount of emails (about $14 per month). You can check out my reviews for MailChimp and AWeber at these links:
http://momstrustedaffiliate.co…
http://momstrustedaffiliate.co…
I would recommend that you not wait until you start getting sufficient traffic before you set up your opt-in form and newsletter because you will miss out on getting the early email addresses. It’s never good to leave money on the table! It’s best to have it already in place so it there ready when the traffic comes.
Thanks for dropping by and I’m glad you found the article useful. Come back again soon and let me know you you have any further questions.
Cheers,
Verna
As someone who is constantly trying to build my own brand and advance my website, I appreciate the advice to cater to loyal readers with a newsletter. Being able to reach out to someone in a more personal way is a great tool for increasing exposure and can definitely help get to more people. I can see how it would help get to more people as well, since emails can be forwarded to others easily, instead of remembering a website link or having to bookmark it.
Hello Jessie,
You have the right idea! Every email opt-in you get is a potential new or returning customer and friends will quickly forward emails to others if it’s something they really like.
Glad you found the article useful. Thank for the comment, I really appreciated connecting. Stop by anytime. Let me know if you have any questions I can help you with.
Cheers,
Verna