You’ve read up on the importance of running a company blog that you update at regular intervals with content relevant to the products or services you sell. You know that blogs and social media are essential platforms for capturing consumer interest. After all, Dream Systems Media reports that blogs and social media comprise 23 percent of all total Internet usage time. However, you’re not sure what to do with email newsletters. Where does email fit into the marketing equation when social media and blogs seem so much more relevant to the modern Internet user? The answer may surprise you.
Direct Marketing to Most Avid Consumers
Some blogging platforms allow visitors to subscribe to email alerts that let them know every time your company updates its blog, but these are not the same as email newsletters your company puts together and sends independently of your blog. Email newsletters should showcase:
- The latest and most important news about your company, products, and services
- Information about new products and services, including exclusive sneak peeks of upcoming offerings
- Highlights of company community efforts, interviews with staff members and other fun, seasonal content
Some of this information will be covered in your blog, but few consumers read every post of your blog. The biggest supporters of your company should sign up to get the most need-to-know news delivered to their email inbox’s. Incentivize signing up for the newsletter by offering coupons, special offers or exclusive content.
Blogs’ Relevance to Newsletters
According to HubSpot, websites that use email newsletters that also blog get two times as much traffic to as the websites that don’t maintain a blog. A newsletter’s success does not mean you should stop updating your blog. In fact, you can link to the latest or most important blog updates in your newsletter and drive traffic to your website with every newsletter you send out. Encourage interactivity and you’ll get even better traffic numbers. Ask your newsletter readers to head to your blog to fill out a survey, for example, or to leave feedback.
How Often to Send Them Out
Updating your blog at least once a week, if not three times a week or even daily, can prove beneficial to your company because it puts more original content on your business website, which will improve its search engine rankings. Plus, you can play around with SEO and increase your blog’s chances of getting higher in search engine results relevant to industry keywords. However, the goal of your newsletter isn’t related to search engine results. Instead, it’s to communicate directly with the consumer base that adores your business the most.
In that case, don’t clog your most ardent fans’ email inboxes with frequent updates, as this will lead many to unsubscribe or view it as spam. At the most, send out newsletters twice a month. However, once a month or even quarterly is more appropriate. No less often than that and you’re not taking full advantage of the platform.
Even if the email is one of the oldest forms of Internet communication, that doesn’t mean it’s out-of-date. Company email newsletters are another avenue of getting more traffic to your site and more sales. Because you don’t shouldn’t send them out as often as you update your blog, they take less effort to put together than you might think and are worth adding to any company’s marketing strategy.
