How Newsletters Can Help Your Business

CopyPress

July 5, 2022 (Updated: March 8, 2023)

Many companies use newsletters to stay connected with their leads, customers, and target audience. They’re an easy and direct way to share company news, promotions, and anything else you want subscribers to see immediately. If you’re not using a newsletter yet, or you’re using one and not seeing the results you expect, you may wonder, what’s the point? Today, we’re discussing how newsletters can help your business with topics like:

7 Ways Creating and Sending Newsletters Can Help Your Business
How Can Other Companies’ Newsletters Help Your Business?
How To Generate Business Beyond A Newsletter

7 Ways Creating and Sending Newsletters Can Help Your Business

Sending a newsletter to subscribers just because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do, or because everyone else is doing it, isn’t a good enough reason to have one. But a newsletter could do the trick if you’re looking for ways to increase interest in your company or better connect with leads. Consider the ways a newsletter helps your business, like:

1. Exploring All the Channels of Content Marketing

One of the best benefits of content marketing is the chance to connect and communicate with your audience on a variety of channels. Whether you’re hosting a blog, offering a webinar, or sending a newsletter, there are plenty of options to help the right people see the messages you want them to know at the right times.

Creating an email newsletter lets you take advantage of direct marketing channels. These let you speak one-to-one with a lead or client and you can personalize them more than other forms of content marketing like articles or social media posts. Want to learn more about how every piece of content works as part of a larger strategy to get people interested in your brand? Download our eBook on the Content Marketing Pyramid to see how the right blend of content gets the audience coming back for more every time.

“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”

Kevin Doory

Director of SEO at Auto Revo

2. Keeping Your Brand on People’s Minds

People are busy. They’re also flooded with information and content most of the waking hours of the day. In 2007, Yankelovich, a market research firm, ran a survey and found that the average person saw about 5,000 advertisements every day. This is the most recent study anyone has done on the topic, but many sources speculate that we now see double the amount of ads in a day, even without the data to back it up.

Whether we see 5,000 or 10,000 ads, it doesn’t really matter because both numbers are high. And when people get bogged down by that much information, you have to compete even harder to get them to remember your brand and your message. Communicating with people directly, like through email newsletters, is one way to do this.

People are more likely to remember a text, email, or phone call which comes right to their device instead of something they see while scrolling the internet. When something comes through a direct channel, it’s also available for people to go back to and look at later. On social media or the internet, they might forget exactly where they saw your content. But they won’t if it’s in their inbox.

3. Finding Your Most Qualified Leads

Image via Unsplash by @solenfeyissa

Newsletters often have a mix of subscribers who include current customers and people in your marketing funnel or sales pipeline. But you may also have subscribers who haven’t interacted with your company yet beyond being on your email list. There are many reasons people might subscribe to newsletters but have no interest in being paying customers. Some could be competitors watching your newsletters for ideas. Others could be people who want to work for your company and hope to find job opportunities.

You can look at subscribers’ metrics and behavior when dealing with your email newsletters to see who might be the most qualified leads for the products and services your company offers. Which accounts click the most of your links? Have any of them led to inquiries or other conversions, like signing up for a webinar or downloading an eBook? Email marketing tools and programs have metrics tracking, data banks, and customer behavior software to help you discover which subscribers fit these categories.

These accounts are your most qualified leads. Their behavior shows they’re most interested in learning more about your brand or want to make a purchase. You can then segment these leads into a separate subscriber category to send other promotions and materials. You can make a harder sell for your products and services to those who are already interested.

4. Building Trust With Your Audience

People like to partner with and buy from brands they know and trust. Content marketing helps build the foundation for that trust, and newsletter direct marketing strengthens it. The topics and content that build that trust differ for every company and industry. Talking about how to clean a swimming pool in a newsletter from a technology company doesn’t make much sense. That won’t build trust with the right audience, even if it’s a well-written and researched article. Building trust with the audience comes from knowing what they want and where they want to see it.

When people go through their inboxes, what are they looking for? More specifically, when they encounter an email from your brand, what do they want to see? Asking these questions and thinking like the reader, not the marketer, helps you pick better topics for your newsletters.

This type of content is also a way to set your brand up as a thought leader in the industry. By curating the content you put into your newsletter, you’re giving your brand’s stance on that topic. What information is the most important? What resources are going to give the audience exactly what they need? As people begin to recognize your brand as a thought leader, they’ll be more likely to trust what you say. This may encourage them to get their friends or colleagues to subscribe, and share your newsletters through forwards or social media, which also grows your audience.

Pro tip: To encourage shares, include an easy option for your subscribers to forward the newsletter to a friend or colleague. Each email platform provides this ability, so simply look up how it’s done with the provider you use.

5. Giving the Highlights

Another great thing about content marketing is that every piece has a purpose. Articles, eBooks, and white papers let you tell the full story of a topic. But a newsletter is a way to preview and tease all those other, longer pieces. Is there a topic currently trending in your industry? Did you just complete research in an area of the field? Give your audience a preview of your thoughts or results in your newsletter.

Then, link to where subscribers can find a longer piece on the topic or other resources related to it. Doing something like this can increase metrics for your newsletter, like click-through rate. It can also increase your web traffic and conversions from qualified leads. Not sure how to set up your newsletter this way? Sign up for the CopyPress weekly mailer to see how a streamlined format makes your newsletter more scannable and easier for your readers to catch the highlights in each issue.

Kevin Doory

Director of SEO at Auto Revo

6. Increasing Your Sales

When your newsletters send curated, personalized information to segments of your audience, it can increase your sales. For example, a content marketing company sending a blanket newsletter to all subscribers that they can now purchase product description packages might not be effective. If the company works with many B2B companies that don’t need product descriptions, the email might go unnoticed or even get deleted, or the recipient may just unsubscribe because they thing your content isn’t for them.

But if that same agency segments its newsletter audience and sends that email only to its B2C clients or leads, it might get better reception. With the right calls-to-action (CTAs), links, and copy, the agency could convince B2C companies to inquire about the new product descriptions and increase the chances for sales.

7. Saving Your Marketing Budget

One of the best things about digital and content marketing is that they’re cost-effective for your budget. While you still spend money for digital marketing to get the right team and tools, production, publication, and advertisement cost less in the digital space. According to Web FX, the average cost of an email marketing campaign per month is between $300 and $5,000. That breaks down to between a penny or a nickel per email, depending on how many you send. Compare that to the range of between $2,000 and $160,000 it could cost to run just one print advertising campaign.

Not only is digital advertising less expensive, but it’s also more targeted and more flexible. Programs like Mailchimp allow you to A/B test subject lines to see which one performs better with the audience. You can also test other features of your email to get important insights into what your audience wants to see. You can’t do the same with print advertisements.

There’s also no way to track who sees your print advertisements and their behavior when they do. Print ads rely more on educated guesses and hoping for the best, whereas digital marketing, like email marketing, has hard data to prove results.

How Can Other Companies’ Newsletters Help Your Business?

Starting your own newsletter isn’t the only way this type of content helps your business. Whether you haven’t started your own newsletter yet or you need help to get readers, there are ways to connect with your audience through other brands’ newsletters and marketing tactics, too.

What Is a Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) Campaign?

CPL is a digital marketing model where marketers and advertisers pay a certain price for every lead they earn through another publisher. One type of CPL campaign most digital marketers understand is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This happens when you pay to show your ads on other websites or search engines. The advertiser pays a fee every time someone clicks a banner. The host site offers the service of promoting your content and you pay every time that service sends you a lead.

PPC advertising isn’t the only way to do CPL marketing, though. It’s common for companies that sell subscription services or anyone working in direct marketing who wants to build a newsletter subscription list.

How Do CPL Campaigns Work?

Each CPL campaign works slightly differently, depending on the medium you’re using. One option is to host your content on a publisher’s website and place it behind a content gate or have some other way for visitors to “opt-in” to see your content. Another way is to have the publishing site drive traffic back to content hosted on your own site. Publishers do this through ads, sign-up boxes, or other tools. Any time a lead completes one of these actions, your company pays for the lead the publisher generated for you. That’s where the practice gets its name.

How To Generate Business Beyond a Newsletter

Newsletters are just one type of content people use to encounter your brand. Even if your newsletter open rate is great and you have a lot of click-through on your links, these metrics don’t matter if they’re not helping you make sales and partnerships. While metrics are a good indicator to know if people find your content valuable and interesting, they don’t always tell the full story of how a newsletter affects your business.

Though content marketing helps with brand awareness and establishing trust with your audience, at the end of the day, if nobody buys anything from your company, you won’t stay in business. Be intentional with every newsletter you create and every CPL campaign you start. What’s your plan beyond the newsletter? How does this piece of content help you meet your goals and increase your leads and sales?

Keep in mind what the newsletter is supposed to do. It’s supposed to connect with your subscribers directly, on a personal level. Then it’s supposed to encourage them to leave their inboxes and come to your site. Finally, it should set up a lead to want to engage in a partnership or make a purchase. How do you plan to track if that’s happening? In what ways can you adjust your writing and newsletter strategy if it’s not working? Content is only as good as the strategy it fits within.

Let CopyPress Guide Your Content Strategy

Whether you’re creating your own newsletter content or engaging in CPL tactics, newsletter content can’t stand alone in your strategy. You need other pieces and channels to support your email marketing efforts. Where are you going to get the links, downloads, and content to gate, all with strategy and SEO in mind? Turn to CopyPress! From blog posts to eBooks and white papers, we help pull your audience further into your business world after they move away from your newsletter content.

Excited to start your next great content partnership, or have questions about what CopyPress can do for you? Schedule your introductory strategy meeting with our team today.

Christy Walters

CopyPress writer