Posted by John Vinson

Chris Marriott, of iMediaConnection haswritten a very interesting article regarding email newsletters. Marriot tests the minds of his readers by hypothesizing what would happen if the email newsletter became extinct, and what would marketers do without the platform. His ideas led me to think of not necessarily the death of the email newsletter, but how it must evolve in order to survive.

One of the major problems with the current state of the email newsletter is speed and relevancy. With the boom of social media, specifically Twitter, information has become more about ‘time of delivery’. Many times it doesn’t even matter if the information is truly important, as long as it’s up there quick for people to find. There are repercussions from this line of thinking, but that’s another topic for another time. For email marketers, this shift in the internet paradigm has led to different strategies. Many of which you should be researching, and in turn adopting.

In Marriot’s ‘email newsletter death’ article he references ‘triggered emails’, which is a strategy that would send emails to certain users depending on something they triggered on your site. For example, if a potential client clicks on ‘Yachts for sale’, a triggered email might send them special deals regarding shipping classes. Expanding upon this thought even further, why not just institute triggered email newsletters?

Obviously, using triggered newsletters would require a special set of circumstances. First, you’d have to make sure there’s enough relevant content on your site or through your business to sustain multiple newsletters. Also, determining the increased workload and how much of your time and resources would be required to send multiple newsletters. After debating these various factors, you decide this could help your business, you can move onto the next step.

So, you’ve decided your site has enough content and your resources are organized to develop multiple, now it’s time to put your decision making to good use. First, a heavy amount of analytics is required to determine how you want to divide your triggered newsletters. If you discover your users are only visiting two places on your site, then having two specially designed newsletters is needed.

Once you’ve complete analytics, the fun part begins. Let’s say your business is in animal care. Your website has various pages where people can find tips for taking care of the different pets they have. You discover enough users who are interested in dog, cat, and rabbit care. Developing targeted newsletters would be as simple as shifting content around to showcase the animal each user was researching. You can still have all the design, and links your other newsletters have just with better targeted information.

Another issue presented by Marriot is speed of delivery. If you have a weekly newsletter and your content is continually being updated on a daily basis, then your newsletter’s relevancy is going to be extremely low. However, if you send your newsletters out on a daily basis, you run the risk of your users believing it to be spam.

Again, analytics should be your crutch when deciding on delivery frequency. Track how often users visit your site, and plan your deliveries accordingly. Perhaps you can have a daily newsletter for people extremely interested in your site, and then a weekly newsletter for those who are more casual.

Marriott’s article presents all kinds of thoughts we should be having for evolving the email newsletter market. Adaptation is the key to survival. Think about that as you go through the motions of your regular newsletter campaign.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under Advertising, Email, Newsletters, Tips. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: John is a staff writer for WebProNews.