How to get the most out of this high-tech customer communications tool.
Yes, you can send out an e-mail advertisement, but why do so when you can just as easily place your ad in the body of a newsletter that you're sending to someone at their request. Consumers deluged with unsolicited e-mail routinely delete messages before reading them. Embedding your ad in the body of a targeted newsletter provides the perfect way to inform and advertise at the same time.
E-mail newsletters have enjoyed exponential growth. Penn Media, the 800-pound gorilla of online newsletters, recently announced that it had more than 50 million subscribers to their various newsletter offerings. That's a lot of news and a lot of exposure.
Free enterprise being what it is, nobody should expect to get a newsletter that's really free. After all, companies design these newsletters as vehicles to establish and maintain customer relationships. Invariably, theyr'e going to throw in some advertising for good measure. And studies suggest that this is a smart marketing idea.
Overall, newsletters fall under the rubric of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Although CRM newsletters are indeed marketing vehicles, the best ones contain information of perceived value about a pertinent topic. As a customer communications tool, e-newsletters are unparalleled. You can distribute them at a very low cost, drive subscribers back to Web sites to learn more about a particular topic, and generate revenues through paid advertising.
Newsletters have other advantages. If the news is particularly memorable, the recipient will often forward it to others, garnering additional exposure for advertisers. Moreover, some e-newsletters are printed and saved, which guarantees additional exposure.
One potential drawback to e-newsletters is that they can limit creative options. Many e-mail newsletters are text only, which limits advertising space to a set number of lines and characters. But many marketers often prefer an all-text ad that users save and forward to an attractively designed HTML e-mail ad that most users delete before you can say 'spam.'
Finally, e-mail newsletters provide marketers with targeted exposure on a regular basis. While consumers might understandably become annoyed with frequent e-mail ads, a weekly newsletter they've asked for encounters no such resistance. Indeed, a recipient will often welcome and even anticipate weekly or daily e-newsletters. The key is to provide subscribers with genuine value, not simply a transparent advertising vehicle.