eBusiness - E-Newsletters for Businesses

Users react very strongly to E-Newsletters.  As opposed to case studies of website usability where users are much more oriented towards functionality.  Even websites that you visit daily will feel like a tool where you simply want to get in and get out. 

On the positive side, a well documented E-Newsletter can create a very strong bond between the user and a business, much stronger than a website can.  On the other hand usability problems have a much stronger impact on customer relations than they normally do. 

A significant number of customers can be lost to a business, because of usability difficulties in the subscription and design processes.  In order to maintain healthy relations with your client base, it is worth spending the time improving the unsubscribe process.  Studies show that people tend to remain subscribed to a newsletter, even when they don’t want.  This is because of difficulties in the unsubscribe procedures.

E-Newsletters must be smooth and easy.  The benefits of the E-newsletter must be communicated in the subject line.  Most people only tend to skim through the newsletter and therefore to have a catch subject line, is what is going to get their greater attention.

Benefits of E-Newsletters

It is essential for a successful website to be able to contact its customers.  This can be an invaluable asset to your company. 

Even if there are customers who have never ever bought anything from you. Once you have their permission to contact them, they provide you with a resource which can be useful in one of several ways.  A person who signs up for your newsletter gives you the opportunity of increasing your brand recognition and marketing your products, as opposed to random visitor to your site, who comes to it, by chance, but soon turns away.

Having your name in their mind makes them more likely to return to your site or brick and mortar store. 

Use your mailing list judiciously.  Always include content that will be of interest to your client – not just what you want them to buy like unbiased product reviews, links to similar (non-competing) sites, how-to articles... The list goes on and on.  If selling is your only objective of an E-Newsletter, they may ignore your mailings, or worse, report your letter as spam. Being known as a spammer is a critical blow to any legitimate business.  It is important to pay respect to the fact that they have trusted you with their personal information and it is therefore important not the break their trust.  Written and distributed effectively, your newsletter can be a great contributor to your site’s success.

E-Newsletters and your Business

While the rest of push technology of the yesteryears has faded, E-Newsletters has remained as a formidable tool for businesses to maintain contact with their customer and build lasting relationships.  If you’re serious about using the web to market your business then you ought to take a look at what E-Newsletters can do for you.

In today’s highly competitive world, it is important that we retain our customer that he have strived so hard to attract, towards our business.  Think about it.  How many people have visited your website since it first opened for business purposes.  500? 200,000…a million?  How many of them could you could you target if you wish to advertise your latest marketing campaign?  Probably, not many.  If you have no way of establishing contact with all these customers, you have let them slip through your fingers.  All the effort that you spent building your website and attracting customers to visit it, have not been productive.

What if, on the other hand you were able to establish contact with these customer.  If not all of them, atleast the ones that were interested in doing business with you?  Well if this sounds interesting, this is one of the mian benefits of E-Newsletters.  It helps you maintain contact with customers, who may want to maintain contact with you.

How many times have people stumbled across your site.  How likely are these people to remember your website URL, or moreso, how likely are these people likely to return to your site.  Once people have gone from your site, the chances of them remembering you and therefore returning is negligible.  That is where E-Newsletters become ever so important.  For reminding customer of your presence.  For letting them know that you yet exist.  Each time they receive your newsletter, it brings your business back to the front of their mind.  Everytime they hear from you, the chances that they will return to your site, increase.

Your regular E-Newsletters build trust in the log run.  The voice and manner of your E-Newsletters become familiar to your customer.  Your ongoing  conversations build trust.  And as you know, trust is the heart of any business, moreso e-Businesses..  When you can offer something of value to your reader, over the years, you and your business become trusted.

Closely related to trust is a reputation for excellence.  Just the branding works.  If you were to choose between a store brand and a brand name, chances are that you would more likely choose the brand name.  Even if you have no previous experience with it, the brand name is so familiar to you and so well engrained in your mind, that it brings with it a level of comfort and trust in its excellence.  Similarly, for e-Newsletters, this constant conversation with your customer bring with it trust. 

Through E-Newsletters you can tell your subscribers of the latest products and services that you have to offer.  So long as  you offer some information of value to your customer, they will take a look at what you have to sell.  E-News letters are a ready vehicle to let  your best prospects know what you have for them.

Lastly, there is every likelihood that your Newsletter does well and has a large subscription, enough for people wanting to advertise their brands and could contribute a substantial bit to offset the cost of publishing your E-Newsletter.

E-Newsletter Checklist:

• Your Website Address(es)
• Personal Introductory Note
• Copyright Information
• Links to products and information mentioned in your letter
• Privacy Policy
• Convenient Subscribe/ Unsubscribe option

That’s all it takes…

All E-mail programmes can read ASCII formatted text.  This is text that is displayed in plain courier font with no formatting option, colors or styles.  The good news is that most(not all)  E-mail programmes can read HTML formatted text.  This means that in your E-News Letter you can include tables, colours, pictures and even links to other sites. 

To create an HTML formatted E-News letter you could used a basic text editor such as notepad, or more advanced editors such as Macromedia Dreamweaver or Adobe Go-live.  You need a database to store a list of your e-mail contact addresses and other relevant information(if applicable)..  This database could be in the form of a simple spreadsheet or a RDBMS(Relationship Database Management System)..  Finally, of course you require the e-mail application to send your E-Newsletter to prospective customers. This application could be Client-based (eg. Microsoft Outlook) or Web-based (hotmail.com, gmail.com etc.)

That’s it.  Just three simple requirements and you could be building relationships with more customers than you could have imagined!

Caution

Bulk mail distributions sent out to addresses not requesting or not wanting your message is known as “SPAM” and is illegal. You must at minimum provide a means for your clients to “opt out” of future distributions (and honour that request) or preferably have a subscription based system that is distributed only to parties that have agreed to receive your message(s).