Maximize Your E-Newsletter Value – Tips For Integrating Into Public Relations

Electronic newsletters (better known as e-newsletters or e-zines) are one of the easiest and most underutilized tools companies can use to enhance a Public Relations (PR) or marketing campaign.

Many companies have seen the value of an e-zine for their sales and marketing benefits, but have you thought about how you can use the e-zine to enhance your PR campaigns? Probably not. We are here to say, it’s time to start thinking! The end goal of the e-newsletter and any PR campaign are actually the same: spread the word. So these two tools have a natural synergy. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Build It & They Will Come
When you develop your distribution lists, look at your contacts from a PR prospective. In other words, make sure to include journalists you have an ongoing relationship with. In addition to traditional media, consider the following PR sectors:

• Get contacts for your trade associations, member organizations, and other industry influencers.
• Make sure to add prospective customers so you can tout your company’s achievements.
• Collect subscribers from your website, trade shows, networking events, referral programs, etc.

Content Counts

The typical format of an e-zine is to start with an article of interest to your audience and then follow up with any special offers or promotions and sometimes a customer success story. We suggest opening up your content ideas to include vital PR components.

• Maximize Tip Sheets. One of the biggest fallacies of PR and marketing is that everything has to cost big bucks! Don’t spend the money to create a PR piece and only use it once. Reuse and repurpose expensive pieces and make them more cost effective. The perfect example is the tip sheet. If you have created a tip sheet for media placement, rework it a bit and use it in your own newsletter. We suggest including only a few of the hits and then either linking them back to your site or requiring the reader to e-mail you a request for the full tip sheet.
• Create an “In the News” Section. Each and every e-zine you send to a client should contain information about your organization’s successes in the industry, latest news hits, and forward-looking events or promotions. Make sure to link back to the full article or press release on your website to drive traffic back to where it can result in sales.
• Summarize Your Blog. If you spend time populating your blog with commentary on industry trends or company viewpoints, highlight it in your e-zine and then link back to your website. This encourages visitors to go to your site and perhaps comment about your topics at their blogs.
• Look to the Future. Give your readers something to look forward to by introducing them to forthcoming feature articles, tip sheets, and promotions/events.

Reach Out – Web 2.0

Don’t limit your e-zine to your own subscriber base. Find association pages, industry blogs, and other relevant websites and offer them your newsletter. Many times other companies are looking for content to fill their own websites. A simple link to your e-newsletter opens up a whole world of benefits. You will get great PR exposure and increase your inbound links, and important component of SEO (search engine optimization.) PR should be used as a part of SEO because it is a stellar tool for helping your website visibility in search engines.

Be Consistent

One of the biggest mistakes we see organizations make (besides SPAMMING) is to develop an ezine only to let it die on the vine. Deliver useful, timely content to your readers on a regular basis. They need to know you’re coming, and learn to expect (or hopefully) look forward to your communication. Best case scenario would be to select a time of the month, such as the first and third Thursday, and stick to the schedule.

Cross-promotions Mean Cross-communication

Marketing and PR, as always, overlap in the world of electronic communication. When developing any campaign – be it sales, direct mail, media push, we encourage you to involve key members from other departments or job functions who may be impacted or have input on your campaign. For example, your marketing team may want to assign a special offer code on a product promotion that ties it back into the e-zine.

Costing little in terms of time and money the e-zine presents the opportunity to establish repeat contact and increase marketing and sales opportunities by building a relationship with your target customer. With the e-zine, you already have a captive audience in front of you of current, past, and potential customers, which makes it a great PR tool. Start thinking about your e-zine in terms of PR.

Amy Chilla and Melissa Gillespie, founding partners of Innova Communications, are seasoned PR and marketing consultants who have specialized in helping businesses get positive media attention for more than a decade. They can be reached at 949.218.0312 or by visiting http://www.teaminnova.com.