Email Newsletters – Powerful Communication Tools

photo credit: Dru Bloomfield - At Home in Scottsdale

Great marketing is about layering. It’s about creating many different channels of communication that all support each other and build on each other. We’ve previously talked about using traditional media to augment your social media efforts, but how many of you use an email blast-newsletter to communicate with customers and potential customers? If the answer isn’t everyone, you’re missing a huge opportunity to connect and create top of mind awareness. Sending a monthly newsletter to people who opt in to your mailing list is a great way to make sure that you stay top of mind.

Now imagine if you also offered something of value in exchange for the email signup. Either a coupon, white paper, FAQ or something interesting and relevant to your business and your customers’ needs. You signups will increase several fold. Your list will grow and you’ll have the opportunity to talk to these customers and potential customers once a month. And is what will separate you from just an interesting site they happened to surf across once upon a time to a company that provides a valuable solution to their real business needs. And that’s what we’re all trying to accomplish to move from an interesting idea to one what solves a customer’s real problems.

The first thing you’ve got to have is an email list. If you don’t have one (or even if you do) why not check out Mail Chimp or Constant Contact. Both of these services offer you the ability to easily put a signup form on your website, and more importantly on your Facebook Fan page. With a few setting changes on your Facebook page, that email signup can be the first page someone who is not already a fan lands on. If you’ve already got an email list, you can import it – if you don’t you start building it with those opt-in forms.

Next, determine what your email newsletter schedule will be and get ready to start it and stick to it. Provide helpful information in your newsletter, sales, and great ideas. Get consistent about your newsletter and you’ll see the opportunities generated from it grow with new signups everyday and business begin to be converted from it. By all means support it and talk about it in your social media channels – it is about layering after all.