The problem many companies make is that they think e-newsletters are a simple and easy marketing tool to deploy. But they are so much more; it needs to be engaging to the tens, hundreds, or thousands of people in your mailing list, engaging your leads and customers, selling more products and services (Chaffey, 2006).

Look how in B2B marketing, e-newsletters outperformed traditional promotional marketing campaigns

 

Before we go any further, we must establish whether an e-newsletter is right for you as you don’t want to  waste time and budget on this, as Fifield (2008) suggests, there will always be leakage in marketing spend but you must identify where it can be minimalised. According to HubSpot (2016a), you must do the following to determine if this approach is necessary:

• First do some industry research – are there successful email newsletters that people like to subscribe to? With the resources you have available, could you be successful? This is essential as the industry you operate in may not be the type that recognises e-newsletters as a good source of information.
• Examine your business’ goals. What are they trying to achieve – increased leads? Retain customers? Increased brand awareness? If your business goals do not align to what an e-newsletter can achieve then this is not the best approach. Check out the potential they can offer.

If your industry or organisational goals do not align to email newsletters, your time might be better spent creating something else like a lead nurturing email campaign or content for your blog.

Benefits of e-newsletters
To understand if e-newsletters can work towards increasing brand exposure, we must look at the benefits:

1. The time and effort it takes to produce a B2B campaign using offline direct communications like telesales or print is staggering. E-newsletters turn communications into a quick and easy way to reaching out to your target audience.
2. E-newsletters allow real-time messages with instant delivery unlike other campaigns like postal.
3. Personalisation can take place, increasing the customer journey and experience with many dynamic opportunities. Personalising e-newsletters is less challenging than creating separate postal, print or advertising campaigns as customers can be segmented into smaller groups for personalised messages.
4. According to Kompella (2015), e-newsletters allow A/B testing where two different versions of an email can be sent to see which performs better. Check out ‘A Guide to A/B Testing Tools’. This can allow an agency to test which approach improves their brand exposure.
5. They are trackable and can be measured on open-rates, click-throughs, new-subscribes, and unsubscribes (Weil, 2002), with the ability to track sales and user engagement. Online email marketing solutions like MailChimp can provide valuable information to measure these metrics.

Click here to download HubSpot’s free guide to creating email newsletters with even more tips

Disadvantages of e-newsletters

To make sure e-newsletters have a positive impact on exposure, you need to consider the disadvantages to then be able to overcome them:

1. Recipients inbox’s get clogged with email. To cut this down, servers have spam filters that could result in your e-newsletter being marked as spam. With approximately 79% of permission-based emails reaching the inbox, spam filters are working harder than ever (MailChimp, 2016). Click here to read MailChimp’s guide on how to avoid spam filters. It is extremely important for those investing in email marketing to fully read and understand CAN-SPAM laws regarding opt-out requests from customers (Mohammadi, et al. 2013) to make sure laws are not broken.
2. Some subscribers may be signed up to the e-newsletter with more than one address, and some read by more than one person, making measuring results difficult (Brownlow, 2016).
3. Recipients must have an option to opt-out, creating an easy way for subscribers to stop viewing your e-newsletter (Wagner, 2016). This means you may not be able to get your brand in-front of some of your target audience via email, affecting brand exposure.
4. Readers can become disengaged if the organisation tries to sell to them all the time, or if the content is not relevant, as this can be frustrating.
5. Creating a loyal following that reads the e-newsletter is difficult. With many involved in the circulation of content in such a networked culture, ‘stickiness’ which can be a measure for success is not always achieved (Jenkins, et al, 2013).

How can agencies take advantage of e-newsletters to increase credibility?

To overcome these disadvantages mentioned, Dave Chaffey (2006) has published a ‘Total e-mail marketing’ book looking at how to maximise your results from e-marketing, emphasising on developing relationships with existing customers, and acquiring new customers. To see how others have overcome these disadvantages, look at ‘The Top 100 Email Marketing Campaigns‘ according to Campaign Monitor. Jenkins, et al, (2013) agrees with Chaffey stating that companies need to adapt communications from ‘hearing’ to ‘listening’ to create meaning in the communications produced. This will help improve ‘stickiness’ of e-newsletters. If this is achieved, participatory circulation can result in the e-newsletters being forwarded to friends and colleagues, increasing the brand exposure.

Lee (2012) states it must be easy to subscribe, which can be linked to your website, blog, or social media channels. It’s important to tell subscribers what to expect and how often to expect it as this has a big impact on whether recipients will set time aside to read your e-newsletter. To increase ‘stickiness’ and brand reputation, e-newsletters must be what the reader wants to read – segmentation can take place to target certain subscribers through effective planning. The subject line is vital in increasing open rates, according to MailChimp (2015), the best subject lines are short, descriptive, and provide the recipient with a reason to open the email.

To look at more tips on email marketing, click here.

According to HubSpot (2016b), e-newsletters can make a large impact on revenue; with those who buy products marketed through email spending 138% more than those who did not receive the email offers. This shows that marketers need to execute their e-newsletters effectively to gain full advantage, but if executed ineffectively, can have a negative impact, with Banasiewicz (2013) stating, successful tracking and analytics of data can help overcome this negative impact. A main mistake organisations make is sending too many or too few e-newsletters, these need to be monitored to make sure the reader is keeping up to date with the brand but not overwhelmed. Another mistake is that bounce rates are not monitored with companies surprised to find that less than 50% of their email newsletters were getting to their recipient (NetXtra, 2016), so to increase brand exposure, these need to be monitored regularly.

To investigate the most common mistakes, click here

Great customer service is about giving people what they want, when they want it, in the most efficient way possible with Day & Hubbard (2003) stating, customer relationships have gone digital. This logic can be represented in e-newsletters. They are a great way to keep clients up-to-date on industry news/company actions, and as according to Nielson Norman Group’s report, readers feel emotional attachments to their e-newsletters (Corkery, 2013), showing it’s a great tool to take advantage of and encourage repeat business, and increases brand exposure if executed properly. There is easy-to-use software that includes everything you need to create, send and track results of email marketing campaigns. Click here to see HubSpot’s key tips in improving your e-newsletter that people will actually read. 

 

So yes, e-newsletters do help increase brand exposure, but only if executed properly.

 

Want to read more, you may find the following interesting:

The 25 Best Email Marketing and Newsletter Apps

Email Marketing Benchmarks

Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing

The Beginners Guide to Starting a Newsletter and Email List

References

Banasiewicz, A (2013). Marketing Database Analytics: Transforming Data for Competitive Advantage. New York: Routledge. 

Brownlow, M. (2016). Email newsletter metrics. [Online] Available at: http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/emailnewsletters/metrics.htm [Accessed 11 Apr. 2016]

Chaffey, D. (2006) Total E-Mail Marketing. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007. Print.

Corkery, C. (2013). 7 Golden Steps to Creating an Effective Email Newsletter. Verticalresponse.com.com [Online] Available at: http://www.verticalresponse.com/blog/7-golden-steps-to-creating-an-effective-email-newsletter/ [Accessed 11 Apr. 2016].

Day, G., and Hubbard, K. (2003) Customer Relationships Go Digital. Business Strategy Review 14.1. 17-26. Web.

Fifield, P (2008). Marketing Strategy Masterclass: Making Marketing Strategy Happen. Hungary: Elsevier.

HubSpot. (2016a). How to create an email newsletter people actually read. [Online] Available at: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/guide-creating-email-newsletters-ht [Accessed 11 Apr. 2016]

HubSpot. (2016b). How to create email newsletters that don’t suck. [Online] Available at: http://offers.hubspot.com/email-newsletters-that-dont-suck [Accessed 11 Apr. 2016]

Jenkins, H., Green, J., & Ford, S. (2013). Spreadable Media : Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: NYU Press.

Kompella, K. (2015). A guide to A/B testing tools. EContent, 38(7), 30-31.

Lee, K. (2016). 15 email marketing tips for small businesses. [Online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/katelee/2012/10/15/15-email-marketing-tips-for-small-businesses/#230596c7384f [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016]

MailChimp. (2016). How to avoid spam filters. [Online] Available at: http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/how-to-avoid-spam-filters/html/ [Accessed 11 Apr. 2016]

MailChimp, (2015). ‘Best Practices For Email Subject Lines’. Available at: http://kb.mailchimp.com/campaigns/previews-and-tests/best-practices-for-email-subject-lines [online] Accessed 13 Apr. 2016

Mohammadi, M., Malekian, K., Nosrati, M., & Karimi, R. (2013). Email Marketing as a Popular Type of Small Business Advertisement: A Short Review. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 7(4), 786-790.

NetXtra. (2016). Email newsletters: 10 mistakes to avoid. [Online] Available at: http://www.netxtra.net/insights/email-newsletters-10-classic-mistakes-to-avoid/ [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016]

Wagner, N. (2016). Disadvantages of Newsletters. ehow.com [Online] Available at: http://www.ehow.com/info_8347778_disadvantages-newsletters.html [Accessed 7 Feb. 2016].

Weil, D. (2002). Measure the success of your e-newsletter. [Online] Available at: https://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2138278/measure-success-your-e-newsletter-part [Accessed 11 Apr. 2016]