Good marketing is often about consistency. Regular promotion and advertising of your products and services will generate results. The latest marketing technologies – both print and electronic – have evolved to provide fantastic targeting and personalization options. These new, sexy, technology-driven marketing solutions get all the attention. But often, companies leverage these solutions from time to time, as needed, instead of distributing regular, consistent product and service promotions to their base.
When we talk about consistent communications, it’s hard to beat the NEWSLETTER. Yes, the NEWSLETTER.
Boring. Old. Stale. Difficult. Time Consuming. WRONG.
Current. Flexible. Sharable. Content Rich. Marketing Staple. RIGHT.
Why Invest in a Newsletter
The newsletter remains one of the most effective marketing tools available to companies, banks, and credit unions, and it deserves a place in your marketing plan. Here’s why:
Newsletters Reach “Nonline” Users
Surprise. Not everyone is enamored with digesting content online. Many people – probably more than you even imagine – prefer to read PAPER than a computer screen (or phone, or tablet). And a portion of your audience is not online at all. Learn people’s preferences and deliver marketing content to them in the format they prefer.
Newsletters Create Reusable Content
Marketing departments are continually looking for content to use on Facebook, for tweets, in blogs, in e-mail marketing messages, in on-hold scripts, for statement messages. You name it. You’ve become a content curator. Your newsletter can be a source of tremendous, reusable content. Re-purpose newsletter articles by slicing them apart into multiple Facebook posts and tweets to be used in the coming weeks and months. Re-use the articles in blog posts and e-mail marketing messages over the next quarter. Re-distribute your newsletter content across multiple media — leveraging the time you and your team put into composing the newsletter in the first place.
Newsletters Have a Longer Shelf Life
How long do your e-mail campaigns last? A few days, maybe a week. By then, people will have read or deleted your messages (or they’ve gotten lost deep down in their inbox). What about your print newsletter? They have a much longer life – often getting passed between family members, moving around the house until all of the content has been digested multiple times. How often have you read the same publication in the bathroom? Gross. But true.
Newsletters are Effective
Newsletters get read. They get absorbed. They work. And it’s easy to test. Put a simple contest in your newsletter – hide a clue in your newsletter and offer a small reward to everyone who finds it. You’ll be surprised by the number of responses you get.
Before you stop publishing your newsletter to save a few budget dollars, consider how the newsletter can be a staple of your marketing plan. When done correctly, the newsletter can be the “glue” that keeps your marketing and communication efforts on track, consistently, from month to month and quarter to quarter.
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