E-newsletters ride high !
24 April 2008
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According to the annual study conducted jointly by the French Union of Advertisers (Union des Annonceurs), Ballester Consulting and MD Expo (trade exhibition), 83% of respondents say they intend to use e-newsletters increasingly as a direct marketing tool. Are you ready for this challenge ? |
According to this study, although emailing remains at the top of online direct marketing activities in 2007, the e-newsletter could soon outcompete emailing since 83% of respondents envisage to use e-newsletters increasingly in coming years.
You are alrealy publishing an electronic newsletter or are seriously contemplating it ? Now is a good time to refine your strategy !
1. Validate or audit the relevance of your e-newsletter
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Your company or organisation has been publishing its own newsletter for several months or years now. If trends unveiled by research undertaken jointly by UDA/Ballester/MD Expo turn out to be true, we should soon experience higher competition between e-newsletters. |
No need to remind the relevance of contents. Producing a qualitative e-newsletter, with relevant and sought after contents together with an attractive design will prove a major challenge for companies and organisations in coming years. Get ahead of competition right now and survey your existing and prospective customers today !
Every week, every month or every quarter, you brainstorm and deploy all your energy towards publishing your e-newsletter in a timely manner. After a while, some sort of production routine sets in and some - yet crucial questions - are being overlooked : is your e-newsletter actually opened by your contacts, let alone read ? Do readers find its contents relevant and of genuine value to them ? Would they be prejudiced if you were to stop publishing your e-newsleter tomorrow... ?
This scenario sounds familiar to you ? So, now is the time to address all these important questions and measure the effective impact your newsletter may have amongst your current readers and subscribers.
The results of an online survey will allow you to make informed decisions as to pursuing or not the publication of your e-newsletter. You may decide to capitalise on its strengths as perceived by subscribers in order to improve your newsletter as far as design or contents are concerned, or on the contrary you may want to work on the weak points highlighted during the survey so as to improve on the overall quality, or a combinaition of both.
The decision on what to do next will impose itself as crystal clear after analysing the responses submited by your subscribers. Once corrective action has been implemented, your newsletter will then be in harmony and match perfectly the needs and wishes expressed by your readership, hence giving your publication a distinctive competitive advantage over others they may receive, in an ever-increasing and competitive e-newsletters market.
2. Be spot on when drafting the specifications of your future e-newsletter
You are eager to get started on publishing your own e-newsletter ? Exciting chalenge. But what format to adopt ? What length, structure ? What design ? What contents ?
If you want your efforts to be fully rewarded, your resources optimised and obtain maximum return on your investment, then you must design your newsletter with the correct format, distribute it according to appropriate channels (what if your customers prefer a paper version ??) and with highly targeted and relevant contents.
Conducting an online survey amongst your targeted audience segments (customers, prospective customers, employees, external providers, etc.) will allow your company to gather valuable and accurate information from your future subscribers such as :
• Interest or not in receiving a newsletter from your company
• Suggested and expected contents
• Preferred distribution channel (is an electronic version truly adapted ?)
• The format (paper size, colour illustrations), etc.
Such a survey will allow you to devise accurate specifications for your newsletter whilst identifying preferences and establishing a wish list as expressed by the targeted audience. If yhou produce what they exactly want, you will quickly build subscribers loyalty and also win new subscribers quickly.
Last but not least, the online survey will exert a positive influence on your overall company by reminding your contacts that your are still here and going strong, hence contributing to enhancing and reinforcing your company’s image, reputation and even act as a trigger for developing new sales !
Contact : +33 (0)6 22 77 47 63
