For small businesses just getting started with marketing or even more established businesses who want to build better relationships with their customers, email marketing is one of the excellent tools business owners should consider.
Are email newsletters overused? Yes. Do your customers always have time to read your newsletters? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that they never read them. I don’t have time to read all the email newsletters I receive, but I keep my subscriptions to many that I know that I want to read from time to time.
What’s good about email newsletters?
They keep your brand out there in front of your audience. Maybe your readers don’t need your service this week or this month, but they may need or want it sometime in the next few months, and they’ll remember getting your newsletter and go back and search for it to contact you. When they do have time to read, we hope your great content will keep impressing them that you are the go-to expert in your field who serves up valuable information that will help them. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and your newsletter will reach them just when they are ready to buy. An example in my own business is when one of my readers signed up online for a $1,000 program I was offering without even calling me to talk about it. Though when that $1,000 hit my PayPal account, you can bet I called him!
Email newsletters are easy to use and very affordable. There are many good ones out there. I have tried several and found most to be user friendly. Most offer free trial periods. I personally use Constant Contact which has many great features and they keep adding more. I also see many people using Mail Chimp, which is free, with certain limitations. I found a very comprehensive review of email marketing software which you may want to check out. In future posts, I’ll talk more about how you can make your email newsletters more likely to be read and more effective in achieving your objectives. Many of the email newsletter software companies offer tips on their websites and some, like Constant Contact
offer in person classes as well.