Newsletter Marketing

Newsletter marketing is one of the most tried-and-true Internet marketing techniques that has ever come along. Electronic newsletter marketing is almost free, it reaches a usually receptive targeted individual on a regular basis, it provides people with a great incentive to read the newsletter (it's free information or entertainment for them, if nothing else), and it does not drive away prospects or clients with any hard sale tactics.

Newsletter marketing lets people feel like they are choosing to buy instead of being manipulated into being sold. The newsletter is sent via e-mail, but it is not spam. It is something that the recipient has requested to get because he liked information that he found at the marketer's website and signed up for the free newsletter.

An older variation on the theme of the online e-mailed newsletter is the "snail mailed" newsletter, which is sent out via post to a business' database of clients and prospects (people who have said they may be interested in a business' services at a later date but not now). This can be a very valuable strategy even in the Internet age for marketers who know they have a target demographic that isn't very Internet savvy.

However, in these days of the Internet age, usually the more useful technique will be e-mail. And typically, it takes marketers only a few hours to write a full-length quality newsletter. But for newsletter marketing in either form to be successful, there are certain qualities that the marketer has to include in the newsletters.

Must Give Value.

First, a marketing newsletter has to give value. This value is given through the free information about topics relevant to the marketer's business or industry (and presumably to your recipients), and it shows forth a business' expertise while also showing the readers how relevant the business or marketer is to their needs and desires.

Must Build Trust.

Secondly, the marketer is building trust with the regular dispersal of the free, insightful information. The readers come to find the marketer a closely trusted advisor on the given subject matter. The more a reader trusts someone, the more likely she is to buy from that someone.

Must be Send out at Regular Intervals.

Marketers have to make sure the newsletter is sent out at regular intervals--once a week, twice a month, etc--and the newsletter has to always be timely and relevant to the current situations of the business or industry. Newsletters are about current events, not yesterday's old news.

Must be Well-written Shareable Information.

The information in the newsletter has got to be well-written, dynamic, even entertaining. A dry newsletter won't keep readers' attention and they won't read much of it. Newsletters also need to contain information that will make people want to share it with other people--this is how newsletters help you find new prospects. One strategy here is to publish your current newsletter at your website so that casual or accidental visitors can read it.

And finally, newsletters should contain at least one unobtrusive call to action.

E-mailed newsletters can contain an embedded ad or link to click on leading the reader to buy. Even a snail mailed newsletter can have a sidebar talking about a special, limited time offer. The final words of every newsletter should ask readers to come to your website and check out what you have to offer.