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Name the marketing strategy that qualifies prospects, builds relationships with existing and potential clients, reinforces your company's brand, gathers customer intelligence, drives traffic to your website—and is cost effective, too. If you didn't come up with e-newsletters, you could be missing a big marketing opportunity.
If you're not publishing an e-newsletter now, the time is right to get in the game—before the field becomes too crowded. (Darien, Conn.-based Jupiter Research predicts the market for e-mail marketing products and services will skyrocket from US$2.7 billion in 2004 to US$6.1 billion in 2008.) But seizing this opportunity requires more than tossing a newsletter sign-up page on your website and putting out a monthly blurb on your products or services..
Before rushing off to publish, you need to know how to create effective content, the ins and outs of launching your e-newsletter, and how to stay compliant with the U.S. anti-spam law—the three most common stumbling blocks for companies trying to launch e-newsletters.
Content that counts
Business loves e-newsletters because they allow you to stay on your clients' radar
screen on a regular basis, but too many companies fail E-newsletters 101: delivering
relevant content that's easily scanned and digested. That's because marketing
departments, which are typically responsible for e-newsletters, often build their
publications around what they want to tell their subscribers, rather than what
their subscribers want to hear.
Placing your audience's informational needs ahead of your specific communication goals will put you a long way towards creating an e-newsletter that gets read. You can hone your sense of what readers want through trial and error, aided by software or service providers that can tell you which articles and promotions generate the best clickthrough rates.
Finally, remember that your readers are busy people who need to grasp what's in it for them and access the information they want, fast. (In fact, according to Menlo Park, Calif-based software provider EmailLabs, the average read time for a permission-based e-mail is only 15 to 20 seconds). Use short paragraphs, catchy yet informative headlines and, where possible, bulleted points.
Support your launch
A newsletter is nothing without a qualified subscriber list. Start by notifying
existing clients of your impending launch. The best way to do this is through
your website, advises Karen Fegarty, president of MailWorkz Inc., an e-mail
marketing software and service provider based in Bedford, N.S. Clients should
be able to sign up for your newsletter on every page. You can create more buzz
among your clientele by holding contests, conducting surveys and using tell-a-friend
techniques.
To attract new subscribers, as well as pre-qualify them as potential clients, offer an incentive that is directly related to your company. For example, in exchange for a subscriber's e-mail address, offer white papers, information about industry trends or discounts on your products or services.
Other cost-effective and targeted ways to promote your e-newsletter include press releases to trade publications, announcements in online industry forums with a link to your sign-up page, and details on all company literature covering how to receive your e-newsletter.
Don't get blacklisted
The U.S. CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and
Marketing) Act of 2003 establishes requirements for those who send commercial
e-mail, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised
in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask e-mailers
to stop spamming them.
Pay particular attention to this law if you have U.S.-based subscribers. CAN-SPAM allows American ISPs to sue unlawful Canadian spammers for civil damages. Even if Americans aren't on your mailing list, it still makes sense to follow CAN-SPAM, if only as a set of guidelines. Companies that do so will be more prepared than others when Canada introduces its own anti-spam legislation, which is expected to mimic the U.S. law in many ways.
However, CAN-SPAM is problematic in that some of its edicts are unclear or open to interpretation. For example, it states that e-marketers must have a "relationship" with the recipient. But does this mean that someone who once gave a business card to a sales rep, or submitted an e-mail address in a contest, has a "relationship" with the company?
To avoid this grey area, Fegarty recommends requiring interested people to subscribe through a double-opt-in process, by which a subscriber not only surrenders their e-mail address specifically for the purpose of receiving the newsletter, but also verifies their request by responding to a confirmation message sent to the e-mail address they used to subscribe. She provides the following CAN-SPAM compliance checklist:
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