In this article, I will list the pros and cons of starting a newsletter PROS Do you communicate with your customers? In this day and age it’s essential to not only make that initial sale but also to maintain and improve your customer’s satisfaction. As the adage goes, it’s easier and faster to sell to someone you have already established a relationship with than to sell to someone new. For most businesses, it is pretty costly to get new customers so keeping them happy and loyal is vital. One way of doing that is building a relationship with them. E-newsletters allow you to communicate directly with your customers. Studies show that with the convenience of e-newsletters, they are more likely to be read than traditional direct mail newsletters. Your customers will come to expect to see your newsletter in their inbox on a monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly basis, thus keeping you in their thoughts. How sweet would it be to hear, “I was just thinking of calling you about buying…”. You can use it to highlight your promotions, customer case studies, introduce a new product or service or just send relevant information that will benefit their business. Building a relationship with your customers will save you plenty of time and money and will save them the hassle of looking for the information; the information will come to them. It’s a win-win situation. How can I manage a newsletter? At Virtually Canadian Inc., we can create newsletters that will stay consistent with your website design and look professional. The consistency of the design is important for customers who will receive e-newsletters to be able to recognize your brand and increase the power of e-newsletters. We will take care of everything for you. The only things we do not provide are the content of the newsletter (who can better talk about your products than yourself?) and the email list. We take care of all the rest. Do you expect your marketing action to be affordable and easy to set up? No? You should! Creating a newsletter is less expensive than traditional methods of direct mail because you eliminate the cost of printing and stamps. Plus, with email marketing, you are only clicks away from sending your message to your target audience; you don’t have to wait for the postal service to deliver your mail. Moreover, once your template is designed, updating and sending your e-newsletter is easy, fast and budget-friendly. Can you track results easily? With an e-newsletter, you can see: – How many people opened your newsletter. – How many people forwarded it and who they forwarded it to. – How many people opt-out of your mailing list. Do you know what interests your customer? Many people, when sending a newsletter, use it to send links to different articles and a brief description of each article. If you provide links in your newsletter, you can see how many people clicked on which links. This way, you know what caught your customers’ attention and what they want to learn more about. CONS Building the email list: The recipients must provide their e-mail addresses. It’s the first rule to respect if you don’t want to fall in the category of spammers. However, some people may be reluctant to give you their email address fearing their e-mail address will be sold or worried that they may receive lots of junk e-mails. It can also take some time before building a consequent list of email addresses Spam Filter: Another disadvantage is that many people now use spam filters. They are sometimes automatic ones provided by their Internet Service Provider (ISP) or perhaps others they have installed themselves. So it may be that your e-mail newsletter does not get through to those who have subscribed but is rejected as spam. The program that we use at Virtually Canadian to send out newsletter is spam e-mail friendly and usually avoids this problem. Conclusion There is no simple answer to whether or not you should start a newsletter. It depends on your company, your expectations and your customers. If you think you have relevant information to share with your customers, if you think a newsletter could help them understand what you do better or improve your and/or their business, then you should consider the option of sending a newsletter. If you think it will be a lot of work to come up with the content because you don’t really have anything to tell your customers, if you are worried that your newsletter will bore and annoy them, then the answer is a no-brainer. At Virtually Canadian, we can manage a newsletter for you and help you build a durable relationship with your customers. Email us to find out more.
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