Ode to the Monthly Newsletter

The inaugural issue of All aBuzz will be hitting inboxes in short order. This monthly Buzz Communications newsletter will include a new blog post or two, word etymology of the month, something from the Buzz Communications archives, and my monthly Sharing is Caring feature (which will share a synopsis of a brilliant book, article, or podcast I can across this past month). All aBuzz will likely take between ten – fifteen hours each month to produce. Time that, frankly, could be used in a billing capacity, bringing in those dolla dolla bills. But I figure the lost opportunity cost is worth it, and here is why.

I like newsletters

I like writing newsletters. So, there is that. When my to-do list is on the daunting side, it is typically the newsletter projects that I tackle first. Newsletters check a lot of boxes for me:

• Bite-sized content – yes please!
• Varied and random content – yes please squared!
• Newsletters provide a good opportunity to get creative about what and how you are (oh so subtly) promoting
• When done right, newsletters don’t take themselves too seriously (not like annual reports…there, I said it, it needed to be said)

Amongst the vast sea of sales-focused emails designed strictly with instant conversion in mind that we all receive on a daily basis, I like being able to craft something unique, imaginative, and value-added to share with my network. And offer a welcome respite from the constant stream of highly promotional material.

Newsletters are effective

I’ve been producing newsletters for a range of industries and organizations for years, and I have observed first-hand how effective they can be. Effective for keeping your brand and organization top of mind with your target market. Effective for forced content creation. Effective for building connection and relationships. Effective for conversion.

Fun story. During what can only be called a wacky period in my life, my husband and I had an event production company that conceptualized and ran expos. One of these expos was The Dude Show, a men’s lifestyle show. Oh, the fun I had with that newsletter (which, incidentally, averaged a 63% open rate). Lots of bad dad jokes and Ryan Reynold man crush references to be found among the exhibitor profiles and expo promotional content. In our first year post-show newsletter I decided to share some of the attendee feedback collected in our expo survey. The good, the bad, and the ugly. The ugly was pretty ugly, and I have since scrubbed the exact burns from my sensitive brain, but I do recall that one delightful surveyee referred to our beloved show as ‘lame AF’. So, I made the unorthodox decision to include that feedback in the newsletter. And a big media sponsor that I had been chasing for the entire previous year thought it was hilarious and agreed to sign on as a major sponsor for the following year. Which more than made up for the ‘lame AF’ comment. Mostly.

Hurtful burns aside, let’s consider some of the statistics around newsletter success:

• Over 80% of B2B marketers credit email newsletters as their most used form of content marketing
• Email marketing delivers an ROI of $42 for every dollar you spend
• The Seattle Times found that visitors to their site referred by newsletters were 25 times more likely to become paid subscribers than visitors referred by Facebook
• 99% of email users check their email every single day, and almost 60% of them do so first thing, even before checking out social media or the news

That email address was a gift

When someone takes the time to visit your website and sign up for your newsletter, they are giving you a gift. A gift of opportunity. Opportunity to stay in touch, build a relationship, showcase your expertise, and establish a personal connection. And by failing to use that gift, your gift-giver may wonder why they even bothered.

While social media and other forms of digital marketing all have a very real place in your overall marketing strategy, newsletters allow you to better control your narrative and craft messaging that is specifically tailored to your target audience. By sharing valuable content and maintaining an open dialogue, you can establish trust and show that you are invested in your customer’s success.

Newsletters force business development activity

The thing about newsletters is that you need content to include in them. Which means that newsletters hold you accountable for creating that content. When that newsletter deadline is rapidly approaching, you’ll be less inclined to bump that blog post/interview with the CEO/new product launch to the bottom of the list and risk having a content-less newsletter. By their very nature, newsletters force businesses to regularly reflect on their achievements and goals. In doing so, they are able to identify areas where improvement is needed.

Newsletters can give rich insights

And finally, if you use an email marketing platform (like Mailchimp or Constant Contact), the insights that newsletters give can be tremendously valuable.  

Another fun story from that same wacky expo-filled period of my life. I was responsible for booth sales for said expos, and one of my winning sales strategies was to hit send on my newsletter, pour myself a spot of tea, and sit and watch the Mailchimp open rate data come in. Once I saw that a hot prospective exhibitor that I was chasing had opened my newsletter, I would give them a call. Mind reader alert! It was quite an effective strategy that won more booth sales than it lost.

Those newsletter open rates tell a story. And that is a story about how engaged your subscribers are. If people are regularly opening and clicking on links, it’s a good sign that they’re interested in what you have to say. And if they’re sharing your newsletter with others, yippee – that’s an even stronger indication of engagement. By paying attention to what your subscribers are clicking on, this gives insights into which content pieces are resonating most….and which ones are not. So, you can then go ahead and create more of the former and less of the latter.

Furthermore, you can use this data to segment your audience and create more targeted content. For example, if you notice that a particular group of subscribers is not opening your newsletter, you can send them a more personalized email with content that is specifically tailored to their interests. Mind reader alert again!

All very compelling reasons to get your newsletter on!

Looking for a way to stay top of mind and connect with your mailing list? Let’s set up a time to discuss what a newsletter could look like for your organization.