4 reasons why your business should be sending e-newsletters and what you need to know to get started.
Customers and clients are the backbone of any business. But how can you keep in touch with your existing customers and create a strong relationship based on trust and intrigue? An e-newsletter is a great way to foster a relationship and allows a business to introduce new products, special offers and help create added value to both the business and the customer.
Here we have identified some of the main advantages that businesses gain from using regular e-newsletters:
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Cost
This is probably the largest advantage of e-newsletters. Traditional newsletters require a large investment in time, printing and mailing costs. However, e-newsletters provide an inexpensive alternative. Many e-newsletter platforms are free to subscribe and provide a wide range of professional-looking templates to create your own e-newsletter.
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Track your Engagement
The bonus of e-newsletter service providers is that they provide instantaneous trackable results on the performance of your e-newsletter. E-newsletters provide important metrics such as clicks, email open rates, subscriptions and un-subscription rates. It provides the ability to track sales back to the source and can identify customer engagement. This allows the sender to measure the effectiveness of the overall campaign, who the e-newsletter is appealing to and most importantly ROI. All this information is impossible to discover from traditional print based marketing.
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Targeted Marketing
Customers that have signed up to your e-newsletter have expressed an interest in your products or services. They are more likely to be receptive to receiving information on special offers or new products. It helps to leverage your existing marketing efforts to customers already interested in your offerings. E-newsletters also make it possible to segment your data base of customers in to different groups such as location, to better target your customers. By being more specific with your e-newsletter database will allow your business to increase conversions simply because they are so specific.
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Added Value
E-newsletters provide content that is engaging to the customer and helps builds brand loyalty to your company. By including content that provides tips and instructions on how to use your products or extra services provided, will encourage customers to read further and learn more. It provides an excellent source of lead generation, an opportunity to open communication channels and provides a higher response rate as it is sent to a receptive audience. It is possible to integrate an e-newsletter with your website so that they complement and drive traffic to each other. By archiving your e-newsletters on your website, Google interprets this as new content and will help improve your overall SEO for your website. This all helps to improve your Google ranking when your website is crawled by Google.
What you need to know to get Started
Email Marketing Software – MailChimp
MailChimp is a simple email marketing software that provides several easy options for designing, sending professional e-newsletters. It makes it possible to create newsletters of various types and styles that can also be shared on social networks such as Facebook. It also allows flexibility in setting up your mailing list so that it can be segmented into various criteria and targeted groups to further improve targeting your customers. The best thing about Mailchimp is that it is free for users with less than 2000 subscribers and is only a small monthly fee for users with over this amount.
Sign up today – mailchimp.com
How to Avoid Breaking E-Newsletter Laws
New Zealand’s rules regarding e-newsletter are very clear. The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 and Anti-Spam regulations make it clear that recipients must have consented into receiving e-newsletter communications. The second requirement in New Zealand is that there is a functional unsubscribe link so that a recipient can unsubscribe from any further e-newsletters. Lastly, all correspondence must clearly show the senders contact information. This includes a contact address and the name of the person that authorised the sending.
To build a successful e-newsletter list, it is vital that permission from subscribers is given. Using a simple sign up form at the front desk of your business often results in positive sign-ups. Businesses can also incorporate sign-up to the e-newsletter as part of their business terms and conditions.
Businesses can also embed a signup form on any page of your website. These sign-up forms can be directly linked to your email marketing software, with customisation to support your website brand.
Sending an e-newsletter gives you the opportunity to increase awareness and understanding of your business products and services. If you have any questions about this or would like help setting up your own e-newsletter and database, then give the Dubzz team a call today.
