A strong content marketing strategy is essential for growing your brand and building an audience for your products and services. The goal is to develop leads and drive customer engagement by publishing informative media—blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.—that builds trust and interest in your company and positions you as a reliable, high-end resource in your industry.
While creating compelling content is essential for this strategy to succeed, getting that content in front of consumers is just as important—and often more challenging. You have several tools at your disposal to broaden your audience: a lively social media presence, search engine advertising, and so forth. These tools are essential for getting your foot in the door, but their value diminishes when it comes to encouraging repeat business and consistently reaching audiences.
Email newsletters offer a more focused and engaging way of getting your content to interested customers. Newsletters have many advantages that lead to strong, repeat business and loyal customer bases, which over time help grow your company into something stable and resilient.
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1. Newsletters help you connect with more customers
Email is likely the most important marketing channel available to your business. Every one of your customers, current and potential, has an email address. People trust their inboxes—curated information feeds that they fully control. Those inboxes present an opportunity to enhance your business’s profile with high-quality content that regularly brings customers back to your site.
Engaging with customers through social media requires constant interaction and effort. Oftentimes, their busy feeds drown out whatever you have to say with your fleeting tweet. However, an email newsletter stays in their inboxes and encourages more deliberate interaction with your content.
Email is the most preferred medium for communicating with brands and services, with more than 60% of consumers preferring email for commercial communications. With an email newsletter, you’re delivering your brand message to exactly where customers want to see it.
2. Newsletters increase your business's credibility and authority
When you consistently deliver valuable, relevant information to your subscribers’ inboxes, you boost trust in your brand. Well-written, informative newsletters lead customers to believe in and rely on your company as a source of knowledge, products, and services.
Consider daily email subscriptions like theSkimm, which boasts over 7 million subscribers.
While this type of newsletter requires significant upkeep in terms of producing content and staying up-to-date, it can solidify your brand as a resource and authority. With its consistent and informative updates, theSkimm has made a name for itself as a resource for current events.
3. Newsletters are low-risk and high-reward
Your mailing list contains people who have already expressed some level of interest in your business. This pre-selected audience will be more receptive to your marketing efforts than a general audience you might find via social media or search engine advertising. Add to this the relatively low-cost of email-based marketing and you get a reported return on investment of more than $40 for every $1 spent.
4. Newsletters boost your content marketing strategy
Rather than being a replacement to other outreach strategies, a newsletter builds on and enhances other content that you publish. A newsletter that provides exclusive, valuable information to subscribers and links back to content on your site encourages your customers to engage with your main offerings. Customers will also forward your newsletters, further helping you grow your audience.
5. Newsletters are customizable for stronger engagement
Your customers use your products and services for many reasons, and will be more receptive to content that reflects their unique interests. You can tailor your newsletters based on your customers’ habits and preferences to increase their engagement with your business.
By using purchase histories and business analytics, you can segment your newsletter mailing list in any number of ways; send different versions of your newsletter to customers based on their interests. This personalization will drive repeat traffic and sales.
6. Newsletters enhance your analytics
Newsletters are a great tool for evaluating your marketing strategy and informing future decisions. Most email marketing platforms have built-in analytics to help you gauge your brand’s performance and your customers’ needs.
7. Newsletters are long term
Email newsletters are a time-tested means of engaging with customers. We’ve been using them to communicate since the birth of the internet; they are familiar, easy to digest, and even welcomed in are inboxes. This long history suggests that newsletters will never die—investing in a newsletter publishing strategy will be effective and pay off for years to come.
Conclusion
There’s no denying the advantages of an effective newsletter. A well-crafted newsletter will make your business stand out, drive new leads, and increase sales. Help your business attract more interest, hold onto that social media traffic, and keep your customers coming back with a time-tested resource that you can conveniently deliver straight to their inboxes.
To create high-quality newsletters, hire a writer from Compose.ly.
<div class="tip">Ready to boost your newsletter's performance? Try these email newsletter best practices to engage more subscribers.</div>
This article was written by Compose.ly writer Atom Zane.