Enhance Your Strategy With Email Newsletters

People like to stay connected and up-to-date with what is going on in the world. While you may think an email newsletter is outdated, it’s one of the most effective methods companies can use to maintain relationships with their consumers and brand advocates.

Email newsletters are a powerful platform to introduce new products, launch promotions, establish thought leadership in an industry, share industry trends, and much more. Email marketing is cost-effective when compared to conventional communication methods (direct mail, telephone campaigns) and can be easily tracked for ROI and audience engagement.

In fact, 90 percent of consumers choose email newsletter as their preferred method of communication when receiving updates from companies, according to Nielsen Norman Group. This means that people choose to get relevant information sent to them in a highly accessible, attractive, and timely.

And far from being outdated, email marketing was one of most frequently adopted software applications in 2015. According to a survey by Capterra, 38% of respondents had already implemented an email marketing platform, and 25% of respondents had plans to adopt an email marketing software in the next year.

Email newsletters also have a broad reach, because they’re easy for recipients to forward or share by social media. People love to pass on new and interesting info to their friends and colleagues.

For a successful email campaign, here are a few key points to follow:

1. Give people the option to opt in and opt out. That gives them the power to control what comes into their inboxes.
2. Personalize the email by adding the recipient’s first name to the email.
3. Create an attention-grabbing subject line to make people want to read the email content.
4. Make sure the content is relevant to what the recipient signed up for.
5. Be consistent in timing and format. You can send the wrong message if your readers only get emails once in a while or if the email looks sloppy.
6. Make your emails readable in a variety of formats. Smartphones have changed the way people look at emails, and many people view emails only on a smartphone or tablet, so the email should be designed to read as easily on smaller devices as on desktop computer screens.

Here are a couple of questions to keep in mind if you still doubt email’s effectiveness:

1. Do you check your emails several times a day? Over lunch? In the last couple of hours?
2. Do you ever check email as your preferred method of communication?
3. Do you look at emails on your phone as they come in?

If you’ve answered yes to any of those questions, you’ve just proved the continuing value of email as a business communication tool — no matter what size screen you use.

When a company thinks of email marketing, the first word that often comes to mind is “spam” and believe no one will read their email. That may be true for a very small — and I mean very small — number of unwanted messages that make it past powerful spam filters.

But more often than not, a well-crafted, attention-grabbing email newsletter packed with content relevant to the recipient will be received and read — and the next offering eagerly awaited because it comes from a trusted source that provides engaging, actionable content: your company’s email newsletter.