Are you are thinking of sending out a newsletter to your present and/or prospective clients? Congratulations that’s one of the most effective internet marketing tools you can use. Not only is it very inexpensive, it can produce amazing results. It’s especially effective in driving more referrals and repeat business.
For an overall email strategy, I think you need to be mindful of the following three factors.
1) Targeting
You need to make sure the contents of the emails are of interest to the target market. Often times we start with “us” in mind. It would be great to tell the world about our business once a week/month. The question has to be, what interests your potential target market. That’s what you need to write about.
2) Brevity
A short “tip of the week” will get opened much more often than a long graphic rich newsletter. You are training the end user to open your email, because it’s something they’re interested in, and they know they can digest it immediately and quickly. Even someone interested in the contents of a long newsletter is likely to procrastinate on reading it.
3) Frequency
On average I think the ideal frequency is once a week. If you send out emails less frequently than once every two weeks, you’re likely to get increased spam complaints and lower open rates.
Note; I am of the opinion that long graphic heavy newsletters are not as effective as brief information rich ones.
One of the reasons for this has to do with what happens when you open an email with images in it. Namely the email is incomplete until you click the “OK button” for the security warning about images potentially being used to track your message.
Secondly, more and more people are reading email on their phone, and the processing of these messages can be sketchy.
Thirdly, an email like this has a more conversational, friend to friend, feel. Which emails are you more likely to open and appreciate, those from businesses or those from people you now like and trust.
Lastly, as stated above, a long email comes across as a project for our already overwhelmed day. A short tip that is easy to quickly read and understand will be a welcome change of pace.
All and all I think the businesses fall into a trap with “fancy” newsletter templates, because they look cool. It’s the pride factor. Ultimately, a message that looks like it is coming from an old friend will be opened more and be more successful.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you found this article useful, please share it with other business people who may benefit.