Many people see newsletters as a weekly, monthly or quarterly activity – but why have these intervals been chosen?
It depends on the content of your newsletter as to how often it should go out.
Just in!
If your business sells fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) then a weekly newsletter might be a great way of getting engagement.
Companies like B&Q are good at this – they feature their latest offers alongside great advice articles from their blog that complements the offer.
There are companies who update their products daily – budget fashion sites such as Everything5pounds sends out daily ‘new in’ updates.
If you have a list made up of former customers they’ll appreciate getting the heads up on the latest products and offers so a frequent newsletter works well.
Don’t forget us …
Small businesses that provide services often like to send out a monthly newsletter to remind the people on their list that they’re still around. But what makes a good monthly newsletter?
The ones that have great value are the ones that share good advice and knowledge – their subscribers usually stay subscribed.
If you write regular blogs that feature useful information, adding these into your newsletter is a good strategy.
In some cases there may be more than one audience – and that can mean two or more different newsletters.
For instance: A solicitor may have a family law division, a conveyancing division, a business and commercial division, a criminal law division, etc. The audiences for these services are vastly different. There is a case for educating one audience about the other services, but the main article in the newsletter needs to focus on the interests of the target audience.
… and you’ll never believe this …
If you’ve ever got on the list of some of the professional marketing companies you’ll know that some of them send daily emails – sometimes more than one a day when they’re promoting a webinar or product promotion with a deadline approaching.
Some of these marketers are very clever and write entertaining and useful emails,
Nick Stephenson is a writer who teaches aspiring authors how to write and market books and sends several emails a week – quite long ones – but they are always entertaining and contain value. He frequently offers free learning – as well as promoting his paid-for services and systems.
If you’re going to send frequent emails you need to know your audience well and know what will appeal to them – and then entertain and give value first, before trying to sell your stuff.
Seriously?
If you send your newsletter out quarterly, my question is why wait so long between issues? If you see the newsletter as a vehicle for telling your readers about happenings in your business:
- It implies nothing much happens if you only have a quarterly newsletter.
- Most of the things that happen in your business aren’t interesting for most readers.
Do you want to know who has just joined your suppliers companies? Are you excited to discover they’ve just opened new premises in Glasgow (if you’re based in Kent)? Are you thrilled to discover they’ve just won an award?
These are all big events for your company – but as a news item they don’t stand up. There needs to be a human angle that has some impact for your readers to make them into news.
Break the ‘rules’
There’s nothing that says you shouldn’t simply send out a newsletter when you have something to communicate. It doesn’t have to be daily, weekly or monthly – it just has to have fantastic value for your readers.
We send out newsletters with a couple of our educational blogs (like this one) every couple of weeks. If you’d like to get on our list and learn lots of stuff about reputation and content marketing you can sign up here (and get access to the Treasure Chest which is full of free goodies).
