Does Your Business Need a Newsletter?

It’s true that newsletters are very powerful channels for communication and engagement with your customers, regardless of the type of business. However, it’s also true that maintaining a regular newsletter will require at least a little bit of investment in terms of time and manpower (both of which cost money). This means that in very rare cases, maintaining a regular newsletter isn’t worth the cost if your business doesn’t really need it.

The tricky part is that if your business really needs a newsletter and you don’t have one out of a misguided attempt to save on costs, you may be losing out on a lot of benefits – the same benefits that would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising, marketing, and selling just to replicate manually. So how do you know if your business needs a newsletter? You may want to consider the following:

1. You Need to Constantly Keep in Touch With Willing Customers.

The thing about certain types of businesses is that you need to ensure that your brand or business name is constantly put in front of your prospects, but at the same time, you need to avoid forcing it down people’s throats as that will resort in your brand gaining a negative reputation for being annoying or even spammy. With a newsletter, you can regularly remind prospects of your brand and business name, as well as the products or services you offer but without annoying them. People who are receiving your newsletters specifically signed up for it, so you’re basically able to directly advertise and market to people who have given you permission to do so.

2. Your Business Needs to Reach a Very Wide Customerbase Without Spending Too Much

We get it. Not every business has pockets as deep as Coca Cola’s or Microsoft’s. But most businesses would benefit from reaching thousands of people all over the globe. An effective newsletter will give any business that ability, and there is no need to cough up millions of dollars for a Superbowl spot. Think about it: spending a million dollars for a 30 second commercial that will reach millions of people who are not interested in your product, or an inexpensive newsletter focused entirely on your product sent to thousands of people who are specifically interested in it and probably looking to buy?

3. You Need to Position Yourself as an Expert in the Industry

A newsletter is an effective method of building a reputation as an expert in your specific niche, mainly because newsletters are highly targeted and have the ability to disseminate a large amount of information, as opposed to other marketing platforms. Basically, there’s no way you can prove that you’re an authority on a subject if you only have 100 words on a classified ads to do it or 30 seconds on a TV spot. With a newsletter, you can get away with a lengthy article provided that you make it reader-friendly (as opposed to a boring wall of text.)

5. Most Importantly, If You Need to Build Trust and Loyalty

As mentioned above, newsletters are delivered straight to your prospect’s inbox, and you have their permission to market to them. This emulates a more personal form of communication as opposed to hardselling and other infomercial-like channels. This means you stand a better chance of fostering a healthy channel of communication and a good working relationship with your customers.