E-Newsletters – What are they and the pros and cons of using them.
An electronic newsletter (e-newsletter) is a way of communicating to your target audience through email. In the simplest form it is taking the text from your printed newsletter, formatting it in an email program (i.e. Microsoft Outlook) and sending it to a group of people.
Many organizations these days publish newsletters semi-annually, quarterly or even monthly to communicate what is new in their industry and specifically what has been happening within their own organization, to interested parties. A newsletter is a great way to continue contact with your target audience and keep your organization top of mind in relation to the product or service you provide. Producing a newsletter in printed format however can sometimes be very costly, although you could try to partner with a local printer to subsidize the cost of printing by allowing them some advertising space in your publication. Additionally you need to pay for envelopes, postage and the time it takes for a staff member to prepare the newsletter for sending.
If your organization already produces a printed newsletter you are already half way to distributing it as an e-newsletter. All you have to do is take the text from the newsletter and format it in an email program and send it to a specified group of people. If you are currently only producing your newsletter in print format you may want to consider polling your audience and finding out who would like to receive the newsletter in electronic format instead. You may find that you can produce less printed versions and send out the rest as e-newsletters which would save your organization money. Always remember though that since your printer is already producing your newsletter in print format, make sure they save your newsletter in PDF format so that you can post it to your web site for enhanced exposure.
Some organizations do not create newsletters. There are a variety of reasons that they do not put forth this effort. The main one is usually cost to produce. The e-newsletter has taken care of the cost factor. So if your organization wants to communicate with your audience about new and exciting things happening at your place of work you can now take advantage of e-newsletters to do this. Of course you will have to find someone to write the articles and news but once that is done you can distribute it among your audience through email and post your e-newsletter on your web site as well.
E-newsletters have a variety of pros and cons. In this next section we will go over some of the benefits and disadvantages of e-newsletters.
As you have already read e-newsletters will save your organization money as it costs nothing or almost nothing to send out a basic e-newsletter through an email program. The advantage of this format of communication costing less is that if there is a special e-newsletter that needs to be produced in relation to a specific time sensitive event you can produce the extra special edition e-newsletter and distribute it ensuring that it will get to the recipient in a timely fashion rather than having to wait for the print job to be completed and the mail delivery to be on time.
The simplest way to send out an e-newsletter is through an email program like Microsoft Outlook. There are other programs that will send out your e-newsletter to your target audience and then collect information about how many people are actually viewing your e-newsletter as well as how many are actively clicking on links within it to find out more information. There are a variety of these programs available all with varying costs. One of the more cost effective programs we have found and seen in action is Constant Contact. They have a variety of programs and non-profit pricing as well.
The other beauty of e-newsletters is that they can be interactive. While a print newsletter may reference web sites to visit for more information, they require that the reader go to a computer to do further research. An e-newsletter can reference web sites as links and the reader can click on the links to continue learning more about that particular topic. The e-newsletter does not always have to contain everything under the sun about your organization, you can provide a brief synopsis of what you have to offer them in terms of information and provide links to your web site and other references and let the reader decide what they want to know more about. As well, remember that because the newsletter comes in the form of an email, anyone that has the email can forward it to other people to read about your organization.
One of the disadvantages that come with e-newsletters is the prevalence of spam filters. With spam mail on the rise and spammers continuously finding new ways to get junk email to you, spam filters sometimes sort emails incorrectly and therefore your e-newsletter may not reach the intended recipient. As people are getting used to having spam filters, they are also getting better at checking their junk mail folders and building a “trusted senders” list that will avoid your email being misfiled in the future.
If you are producing a printed version of your newsletter and are hoping to have your e-newsletter reproduce the exact same look and feel that can be a problem. While the look and feel of your e-newsletter is important, you cannot guarantee it will be preserved in all email programs that people will be viewing your e-newsletter in. As a designer, I do not like to sacrifice look and feel for functionality. I would compromise and only have a banner image to introduce the e-newsletter and then have the rest of the email in regular text with bolded texts and links underlined as required.
Another problem that you might face is that your audience may not use computers very often and rarely use email unless absolutely necessary. The key to communicating with your audience is to know and understand them. If they are more likely to read printed materials, because their internet connection is slow and email is not really their primary tool for communication, then an e-newsletter is not the right choice, whether or not it would save money. You cannot force your audience to change. While an e-newsletter is a possible way to save on cost, you have to always remember that it is your target audience that you’re hoping to please by offering them multiple ways to find out more about your organization.
As you can see, getting an e-newsletter together is not a difficult task if you have information to share with your interested parties. It can be a cost effective way to communicate and will add value to your organization as more people become a part of your readership. Your organization will have nothing to lose and everything to gain by considering communication through this method.
References:
http://eleven21.com/blog/the-pros-and-a-few-cons-of-using-e-newsletters/?p=42
http://eleven21.com/blog/the-pros-and-a-few-cons-of-using-e-newsletters/?p=43
http://www.constantcontact.com
|