Why newsletters don’t work.
Email marketing was born from direct marketing.
You may remember it: getting postcards, flyers, coupons, catalogs in the mail.
These were the days when people could buy mailing lists for prospecting and hammer you with mail.
Fast forward to 2021, and despite the advances in technology that allow us to collect and organize data about contacts for better targeting, the idea of email marketing has still yet to evolve for some folks.
The term “newsletter” itself comes from when marketers were printing and MAILING paper newsletters.
The world has changed.
Your audience is not sitting down to open up that paper newsletter with little to no distractions.
They are not wading through your 10 articles and tips to see which one they are most interested in.
As marketers, we are competing with a world of distractions: phone notifications, texts, coworkers or children interrupting us, you name it.
We have a small period of time to capture their attention and deliver content and offers that engage and convert.
So HOW are you doing it? By sending ONE email per month or week with OVER FIVE CALLS-TO-ACTION?
You put all of that effort into it and send it out into the world with mostly crickets and maybe your best friend’s mother replying back that she just loves your emails.
STOP wasting your energy on that one shot.
Break it up and keep your brand top of mind with smaller, bite-sized pieces of content that your audience will actually read/engage in.
What does an alternative to a newsletter look like?
Take ONE of the pieces of content in your newsletter and send that out as an email. Focus on that ONE piece of content.
Then the next week, send another piece of content from that newsletter. Just ONE.
It not only helps YOU send more emails with less effort, but it helps your subscribers focus on ONE KEY TAKEAWAY.
Your job isn’t to just hammer people with content. It’s to guide them to the next stage of their buying journey.
Readers get lost in the sea of calls-to-action if you focus on too many. Help them focus.
This way, you’ll be showing up in people’s inboxes more consistently in no time so that they will then start to expect your emails and EVEN MISS THEM IF THEY DON’T GET THEM.
Offer value consistently. The returns will blow your mind.