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By Aaron Joslow
E-newsletters are a mainstay in nearly every firm’s marketing strategy. In fact, they are often the cornerstone tactic—the foundation for every other marketing tactics' success.
But e-newsletters are laborious to produce. Newsletters need lots of content and different kinds, such as articles, research excerpts, upcoming events, and industry updates.
A (semi-)monthly newsletter usually needs two articles at a minimum. It can take three to eight hours to write a publishable 800-1200 word article.*
There's the time it takes to keep authors on deadline and to work with them past deadline.
Then there's several more hours invested in finding other content to include in the newsletter. And another four to eight hours to build the html and text versions, test it, copy edit it, test it, and send it.
It is, at the very least, a several-day effort.
To what end!? “To stay in touch.” “To maintain our prospects’ awareness of our firm.” Those are common and inadequate answers for the laborious effort of finding worthy content, writing good articles, and publishing a valuable e-newsletter. It is a noisome waste to publish to just “stay in touch.”
Explain Yourself
And what does “staying in touch” mean. Does it mean waiting until the prospect has a need for your services and then hoping they will call you upon receiving a newsletter? That’s unlikely. RainToday.com's research report, How Clients Buy: 2009 Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing & Selling from the Buyers Perspective, does not put e-newsletters in the top 10 list for methods buyers are very/somewhat likely to use to identify and learn more about professional services providers.
Does "staying in touch" mean staying in contact with professional connections? You don’t need articles for that. Use LinkedIn's status update. Tweet your followers. Or call five connections a week to ask them, "How's business?"
The Point
Publishing an e-newsletter is a required marketing effort, but it is not a minimum effort. Going to work is not the same as going to work and doing the job. Every firm should squeeze the most value from their e-newsletter efforts with the following work:
- Form-Worthy Offers: Newsletter can publish material other than articles. Include white papers and reports and in-person seminar and webinar invitations. You can ask readers to fill out form in exchange for access to the material. (These offers are of higher value and readers can justify giving you more information.)
The value here is these prospects essentially raise their hands to say, yes, I'm interested to soak up your content in greater depth. You now know whom to give more attention to in your sales and marketing efforts.
- Track Clicks and Score Leads: As your list grows, you’ll want to take a more sophisticated approach to following up. Track which prospects read which articles and then click to service-related pages. See if prospects keep coming back a week after your eBlast, looking at related pages. You’ll be able to determine those most ready for a sales conversation by reviewing who’s demonstrating buying related activities. You can have systems (such as your marketing automation application) track these activities and score based on criteria ranging from titles, page views, visit frequency, time on site, etc.
Have the authors call or write their readers or have business developers follow up with someone who is demonstrating a high likelihood of shopping services related to your shared thought leadership.
- Spin-Off Content: Look at what topics and titles readers click on to see which ones they like and dislike. When something has terrific click-through rates, spin off content. Create white papers, a series of articles, an ebook, a podcast, or a webinar. Feeding your prospects material they hunger for can only help you.
- Publish Leading-Edge Content: This means publishing articles that start conversations. Consider who the economic buyers of your services are and write to them. For example, executives like to talk about growth and cost savings. Have your content speak to this viewpoint.
In our case, we lead with our white paper, "Expand Reach, Grow Revenue: The Business Case for Lead Generation Webinars." Or other white paper, "7 Keys to Running Glitch-Free Webinars," is filled with good material, but appeals more to practitioners than to executives.
Leading-edge content gives business developers and rainmakers value-added, conversation-starting content to send to prospects and clients. These pieces are not merely "stay in touch" fodder. They springboard your executives into business conversations with people who can sign contracts for your services.
Caution: This does not mean writing groundbreaking articles every time. (Even Einstein only came up with E=MC2 once.) Other kinds of article serve other valuable purposes. They show your firm's grasp of details, breadth of knowledge, awareness if industry developments, and client-focused perspective.
- Furnish a Library of Articles: Most firms deal with a number of topics and a variety of clients. Your firm will look lopsided and inadequate if its content speaks to only one or two issues.
Post two, three or four articles for each topic, vertical market, and business title. Doing so fills your website with ideas and properly weights it with content across all areas of your company's expertise.
- Republish Your Articles: Publish them elsewhere to expose yourself to a new audience. These should be selected publications with large audiences or highly-relevant audiences.
- Publish Other Authors: You are not the only expert. Don't hog the spotlight. Publishing articles by people outside your firm shows readers you offer a balanced perspective and actively collaborate with others. Doing so also brings further credibility to your publication in the form of another respected byline.
More than anything though, publishing someone else lets you work with other professionals. You can discuss their ideas, hear how their article was received by their audience, and help them frame it to your audience.
That first-hand interaction on a substantive but small project gives the other person a taste of what it's like to work with you. It establishes trust and respect and inclines them to working together on something greater in the future or to recommending others do.
- Get Out of Your Head and Into the Real World: People who stop living eventually run out of new stories to tell. Professionals who stop reading eventually cease to have a compelling point of view. Their thinking and then writing becomes stale, stagnant, outdated, and dispensable.
Read and cite industry research and articles. Interview and quote leaders who inspire you. Critique or highlight other businesses' actions. All of this will enliven your writing, give weight to your opinion, and keep your thinking and material fresh for when you speak with prospects, clients, and colleagues.
- Pre-Publish Your Content: Twitter and LinkedIn offer a great platform to soundboard ideas with your followers and connections. After you draft your article, post what topics you wrestled with, what issues you would like perspective on, and what points you would like evidence for.
Your writing process shifts from isolated to inclusive. You start conversations with an array of people actively interested in subjects you highlighted. You strengthen connections, make new ones, and create better content. Win, win, win.
- Generate and Nurture Leads: Newsletters help form the foundation for successful marketing. Your must integrate its newsletter into larger campaigns that involves direct mail, webinars, and phone calls. Without those additional efforts, your firm is unlikely to acquire new clients (that are not referrals).
If you make the effort to publish an e-newsletter, juice it for all it's worth. Dabbling in the cornerstone tactic will bring you some results. But realize you don’t get half the results from half the effort with e-newsletters. The gap between doing them at 100% effort versus 75% produces not a 25% improvement, but a magnitude of difference.
*I’ve heard of people spending as little as twenty minutes writing one, but, with rare exception, they do not match the quality of articles that took more time.
Our Pre-Published Responses from LinkedIn
In pre-publishing this article, we received a number of responses to the questions: Are e-Newsletters a thing of the past? Do you still read e-Newsletters? Why or why not? Are e-Newsletters successful for your firm? Have you recently started or stopped publishing e-Newsletters?
Here is a reprentational selection of the answers:
- They are still very much a part of the mix. Marketing implementation should go out to your clients or prospects via multiple channels. And if e-newsletters are still being read, then keep doing them. If you develop a good network on Linked In and Twitter, then that's yet another avenue to deliver your newsletter.
~Lilly Ferrick, New Business Developer, Forma Life Science Marketing
- We no longer send out newsletters and we urge our clients not to either. Enewsletters fall in the old marketing era of push marketing. As consumers have taken control of how, where, and when they get their information they have continued to tune out one way communication channels such as enewsletters. We have found social media and much more viable and effective opportunity.
~Jill Koeneman, Account and Social Media Director, Effect Web Agency
- Absolutely not. I work in medical writing/editing and there is so much information generated monthly (if not weekly or daily) for physicians in all specialties that e-newsletters are the easiest way to ascertain what's relevant in the peer-review literature and warrants immediate attention and what's relevant, but can wait until a plane ride to be read. As a physician once told me, he doesn't have the time to track down or read all the emails he gets from various pharma companies or device manufacturers or his associations. A quick glance through a well-crafted e-newsletter, however, takes him 5 minutes and keeps him up to speed.
~Michelle Dalton, Director, Dalton and Associates
- I still read and send e-newsletters. I recently sent an e-newsletter and received replies that thanked me. Like everything you receive - online or printed - you can choose to read it, scan it or ignore it. And like everything, sometimes you get it right and sometimes it needs fine tuning.
~Lisa Fish, Franchise Consultant, Development Sherpa
Aaron Joslow is a principal at Rally Point Webinars who specializes in content development and webinar implementation. Click here to email Aaron.
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