(This blog entry follows on from the last one written by Marie on 20th December last year.)
Most marketers will at some stage or other have been involved in producing a customer newsletter. Back in the day these were long drawn out affairs involving copywriters, editorial teams, a designer, typesetter, external printer and fulfilment house. Nowadays they are far more likely to be digital e-newsletters and all you need for success is a mailing list, an internet connection and something to write about.
I’ll tackle content ideas another time but for now, here’s a case study on how I’ve developed a successful model of writing and publishing e-newsletters.
I’ve entitled this post “Blogging and e—newsletters” because I use the two in an integrated manner. For the purpose of this article my business is irrelevant really, but if the context helps you, I sell training DVDs online to church based musicians. I blog most days and every week or so collect the posts together to create a newsletter which is then e-mailed. My more tech-savvy customers get the blogs as they happen on RSS feed but most still prefer a less frequent newsletter by email. And how do I know this? Well having been blogging and emailing for a fair time I then asked my customers what they thought of the frequency and content using a wonderful free online survey tool called www.surveymonkey.com. In case you are interested my survey is here. The results were great and showed an extraordinarily high satisfaction rate (you can see the summary responses here).
Firstly, WHO to send it to?
A permission based list is a no brainer. Don’t buy-in lists, instead focus energy and resources on creating your own. This will be previous and existing customers, prospects, industry contacts, journalists etc etc. Create a simple sign-up form on your website (offer an incentive if you like), capture email details at trade shows, publish your newsletter via your Facebook fan page, your Tweetfeed, offer it to relevant people in your LinkedIn network. In three years we’ve grown our business database to about 20,000 and we run a very small niche business so that’s quite substantial.
Don’t forget to send a copy to your own staff – its good internal marketing. And if you’re publishing via a blog, encourage them to contribute their own comments.
Secondly, HOW to send it
First rule – don’t use Outlook. Outlook is simply not designed to cope with large lists and if you do use it for multiple email addresses you’ll find your email frequently classified as spam.
I’ve used a low cost piece of software called Gammadyne very successfully. It integrates with my database and I had a designer put a newsletter template together for me. You will need a tech to help you the first time but after that its fairly straightforward. The downside with software like Gammadyne is that its sent using your own mail servers which increases the likelihood of the mailing being classified as spam, and also needs to be pulsed so on a big list can take several hours to send.
More recently I’ve been using Mailchimp. This is a hosted solution, beautifully simple and very low cost. I’ve found our click through rates to be far better and the software will manage your unsubscribes and bounces for you. You get lots of data and statistics with great tracking functionality which will also let you discover your most and least popular articles (see screen shot below). They even have a mailbox inspection service which checks your content for spam trigger words and provides a snapshot of how your newsletter will look in different browsers. Click to read my recent Christmas newsletter to give you an idea of my approach to content.
Content - full articles or snippets?
Assuming your e-newsletter has more than one story, you will need to decide whether to publish the full article (main drawback is a very lengthy newsletter) or headline and teaser only (requiring the reader to click through to your website). I’ve gone for the latter approach because once on the website it’s clear from our web Analytics that they tend to stick around, browse and even buy.
I’ll make sure that each newsletter has a good cross section of articles. Remember that mine will all have been posted on the blog in the previous week so I need to be somewhat strategic in having a plan for what to post. You may have some fabulous CRM software which enables you to send different content to different customers depending on their preference, but as most of us probably don’t have that functionality, the best thing is to mix it up and provide something for everyone.
So I will have something funny, something serious and educational, an “ask the expert” question relevant to my industry and perhaps a video clip or podcast. I’ll integrate something more salesy such as a mention of a new product, but its important not to have your newsletter dismissed as a sales tool. People will rarely click and read heavy sales material. Use your articles to build trust and position yourself as a thought leader rather than to overtly generate sales. Trust me, the sales will come but you have to woo the customer first.
Cross links – retaining customers on the site
So by clicking on any of my newsletter teasers you will click through to the full post on the blog. I’ll try and find an engaging photo (www.istock.com is a great low cost source). The blog post itself should be well written, as succinct as possible, spell checked with hypertext links as appropriate.
I also try and add in a list at the end of other related posts on my site that readers may also be interested in. Search engines love this cross referencing and it’s a useful service to readers. I know from my Analytics that they are used – its also a great way of reminding readers of older posts.
Its all in the headline
Your open rate will be directly related to how good your headline is. I’ve found controversial headlines have great open rates, comedy is irresistible and celebrity names work well too. There is some great advice at Copyblogger.com
Other things to think about are the text you use in the “From” field on the email. I would recommend using your company or brand name as customers will already be familiar and less likely to consider it spam.
And think also about your subject line. Research shows that using the word “newsletter” improves open rates. I change the subject line with each issue to reflect the content of the newsletter, but a standard “Your Company Name Newsletter” is not a bad option.
It also makes sense to personalise your newsletter with your customer’s name. Again, research shows better open rates with personalisation.
Monitoring success
Google Analytics is a great free tool which will help you monitor click throughs to your website from any mailing you have done. Simply embed the code in your hypertext links before you send the mailing. Mailchimp and other providers will give you even more data such as click through rates (which you can benchmark against industry averages), open rates by country, forward rates and far more.
If you watch the popular articles, and the ones that are avoided you will soon learn what works. And if you are publishing the posts on a blog, you should get plenty of nice feedback from the comments section.
How often to send
My recommendation would be to start slow. Suddenly inundating your list with a weekly email when previously they have heard from you biannually is going to annoy them. Perhaps start with a monthly or quarterly newsletter. I would say its better to be more frequent with less content than publish some epic tome every six months. Think about the way you read email content sent to you. If it’s short and sweet you are a lot more likely to click and read.
If you are getting a good response with your first few newsletters then perhaps up the ante a little and start posting more frequently. Talk to customers and ask them what they think. Perhaps even try some split tests where half your list gets a weekly and half a monthly newsletter. See how the response rates vary.
But does it work?
In a word, yes. You do need to have the right content (and if you struggle to write well then perhaps look to outsource to a freelance copywriter) and you do need a reasonable mailing list. In the last month alone, our e-newsletter and blog have accounted for over a quarter of our sales. That’s more than search engines brought in despite our SEO being up there at the top of Google. And that’s a lot more than any expensive advertisements or trade shows will have brought in. The budget needed was peanuts. What was needed, however, and will continue to be needed is for me to make time on a regular basis to research and write something compelling. Are you up for the challenge?
I’ll finish with a quote from the guru of permission marketing, Seth Godin:
“It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.
It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.”
Marie Page runs an international e-business selling instructional DVDs teaching contemporary musical instruments. She blogs at http://musicademy.com/blog
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