I often find that when I ask people if they have a newsletter I get a lot of squirmy faces and responses like
“people hate being inundated with emails and newsletters”
“*I* just ignore all the newsletters in my inbox”
“I don’t want people to feel like I’m spamming them”
My response is always that a newsletter is still an incredibly valuable tool for your business and here are 5 reasons why:
1) It comes to them
People are busy. Just because they don’t have time to check out your blog posts or your Facebook page doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in what you’re doing, they just haven’t remembered to make the time to go and visit. A newsletter puts you right into their inbox as a reminder to take the time.
2) Not everyone uses social media
Is your audience entirely made up of people who are ACTIVE social media users? Not everyone checks Facebook daily, not everyone reads blogs, and very few people go back to a web site without a good reason. Those people will appreciate some news coming to them about what you’re doing.
3) You can make them feel special
Put something in your newsletter that can’t be found on your blog or web site, or put it in your newsletter before you put it online. A special discount just for newsletter subscribers, access to content before anyone else or newsletter only content not only makes people feel like they’re getting value out of the newsletter, it’s an incentive for people to subscribe.
4) You pick the timing
Relying on people to come to your site or to the other channels you promote your content on to “find” what you’ve written is less reliable than sending it to their email which more people check regularly. If you are having a special promotion, an event, or any kind of time-sensitive topic that you’d like to share, sending it at a specific time can be a real bonus.
5) They’re more likely to see it
When relying on tools like Twitter, Facebook or Google+ to get your information out, you risk things streaming by or never appearing in their feeds. Even though they may not open your newsletter, they WILL see it come through their inbox and decide whether or not to take the time to read it.
Here is a link to my first newsletter. In my newsletters I will recap the top posts of the month, talk about upcoming events and workshops I’m offering, and give a special discount for one of my services that can only be found in the newsletter. I’d love it if you would sign up!
What about you - do you have a newsletter?
