How Many Newsletters Should You Publish?
A general newsletter is a great way to get started in the e-zine game, especially if your audience is diverse. You can use a general-interest newsletter to promote a wide variety of offerings and see what works. Most often, marketers start off with a general newsletter to build an e-mail list. Then, by tracking open rates, readership, clicks, responses and feedback, as well as by using surveys, marketers can learn more about the specific interests of the audience and create more specialized newsletters to address those interests.
If your audience is already well defined, it may be smarter to start with a niche newsletter, as these can be easier to market and differentiate from those of the competition. In addition, a tightly focused newsletter that is of interest only to a specific group is deal for very specialized offers or for helping to drive more complex sales.
A niche newsletter also allows you to become the big fish in a smaller pond. For example, it’s easier to be the best e-mail newsletter about classic films from the 1940s and 50s than it is to be the best e-mail newsletter about film in general. In this manner, you establish yourself as the leader in a small market and create a strong base form which to build or expand.
Depending on the nature and size of your business, and the diversity of your audience, you can determine which approach will work best for you.
Beyond that, there are four reasons to send multiple newsletters:
’Unsubscribe Insurance’—With one newsletter, a given e-mail address is either on your list or not on your list. By offering multiple newsletters, you have the ability to generate multiple lists, and enable consumers to choose among them, thus preventing the all-or-nothing scenario.
Self-segmentation—No matter how sophisticated your back-end databases are, they are no substitute for the declared preference of a consumer. Let them tell you what they want instead of guessing or applying formulas. For instance, let’s assume you’re a large, multi-channeled retailer and you have a subscriber who is a young urban professional female. Demographic segmentation would dictate that you send her e-mail that addresses fashion, home furnishings and high-tech gadgets. If she once bought tools as a gift for her father, behavioral segmentation would demand that you begin to send this person content about tools, tents and kitchen appliances.
But if you allow this buyer to select her own e-mail offerings, she may very well choose to receive e-mails pertaining to the areas of outdoor sports and toys—a topic that didn’t fit either profile—for her nephews, who you never knew existed. Not only does this tactic offer another avenue of contact with this customer, but because she selected the topic herself she is more likely to open and act upon these e-mails. Moreover, because she selected the topics, she’ll be anticipating your e-mails. What a great start to a mutually beneficial relationship!
Better opportunities for contextual targeting—When it comes to e-mail, specific always outperforms vague. With one-size-fits-all permission, you are forced to write weak copy and provide “special offers” for general merchandise. By creating a set of distinct mailings, you will be able to write crisp, specific marketing copy around each that will speak to the user, boosting readership and increasing your response and revenue.
Increase volume without increasing spam rage— You could never get away with blasting everyone on our list with e-mail ads on a daily basis. But there are may people who will voluntarily sign up for five or more weekly newsletters, provided each is new, fresh and different. You can also vary frequency, format and more to get the right message to the right person every time. A client once told us that sending twice as many e-mail ads would “obviously” generate twice the revenue. This is very limited thinking. At first, revenue will increase. But over time, the risk increases that you will turn off your recipients. A better way is to offer the option of additional newsletters, thus giving customers a reason to actually want more e-mail from you.
The key to coming up with ideas for additional newsletters lies with your customers. Monitor their behavior. If people who visit your travel site are constantly clicking on stories about cruises, then start a specific newsletter featuring content about taking a cruise. Offer suggestions on how to dress while onboard a cruise ship, activities to try onboard, reviews of cruise food and other related topics. Analyze the areas of your site that generate the most interest and then create targeted, well-written newsletters to match. Or simply ask them. Include a survey in your next e-mail newsletter (or on your sign-up form), and ask your customers what else they’d like you to offer.
Matt Blumberg and Michael Mayor are the driving forces behind Return Path, an e-mail performance company. Collaborating with them on this project are their colleagues, e-mail strategists Stephanie A. Miller and Tami Monahan Forman. This article was excerpted from their new book, “Sign Me Up! A Marketer’s Guide to Creating E-mail Newsletters That Build Relationships and Boost Sales (iUniverse Inc., 2005) © 2005 Return Path, Inc. All rights reserved.
