What’s the best way to get your point across? Definition 6, a marketing services firm, thinks it’s through its e-mail newsletter called definingINSIGHTS.
“We wanted to start to publish our point of view on topics that we thought were relevant to our customers,” says CEO Michael Kogon. “We had been very successful as speakers, with public relations and contributing articles, but we hadn’t yet started publishing our point of view.”
Launched last year, definingINSIGHTS now goes out 10 to 12 times a year. But the company wasn’t sold on the e-zine format at first.
“We considered using a blog as a platform but settled on an e-newsletter,” Kogon says. “Our decision was based on a strategic, tactical choice between the two publishing mediums.”
One advantage of newsletters is that it is easier to control them.
“Our newsletter solicits feedback, but we don’t want that feedback to be unedited,” he says. “And that would violate blog protocol.” Kogon also felt that certain issues could be handled more thoroughly in an e-zine than in a blog.
Challenges
Definition 6’s initial challenge was developing an inhouse list, Kogon says. The database was populated with 500 names from online solicitations, and from the firm’s sales force, customer and prospect databases. But the list is now growing through online sign-ups and viral additions.
The audience consists of about company customers (60 %); prospects (20 %)’ vendors (10 % ); and miscellaneous subscribers. Each newsletter features a headline article and three additional pieces that are relevant to each segment of the firm’s audience.
“Customers that buy one of our lines of business will read those subsections,” says Kogon. “Those that buy a broad rage of our products will read all of them.”
Kogon also uses the e-newsletter to conduct surveys and highlight case studies.
What does the company get from the project? Information. Knowing what customers are interested in helps the company meet their needs, Kogon explains.
That intelligence is gained by tracking what people are reading, passalong rates, the duration of visits and unsubscribes.
“If we understand where readers are looking, we can speak to them about there they want to be,” says Kogon. As for unsubscribes, Kogon wants to know why the information became irrelevant to the reader. “If they’ve been reading me for four months and they unsubscribe, did I lose a customer, a prospects or relationship?”
With a 90% customer retention rate and about two or three unsubscribes per quarter, there’s not a lot for Kogon to be concerned with. But he sometimes follows up with the account team to gather more information. “Oftentimes, it’s to an account teams chagrin that they’re not having a good relationship with that client,” he says.
Open rates for definingINSIGHTS run between 40% and 60% and Kogon doesn’t track conversion rates since he views the newsletter as part of an integrated mix of customer touch points.
All technical work for the newsletter is conducted in-house. ExactTarget is used for the e-mail distribution and WebTrends picks up with Web tracking. “We don’t want to lose information because readers go from the newsletter to the Web site so we track across those two publishing mediums,” he says.
It’s difficult for Kogon to measure ROI of the newsletter since it is part of an integrated market plan, he says.
However, if the retention rate stays at norm or improves, that tells him that the number of customers choosing to purchase more of the company services is on the rise. “Ten percent of all inquiries probably come from our e-newsletter,” he says.
Kogon adds: “It’s a cycle. may go to a seminar, get a white paper and then get newsletter. Then in the consulting phase, we influenced their mind enough to make them curious about a business relationship. I don’t know the touchpoint but the e-newsletter is rarely the last moment prior to contract. That’s typically an event.”
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