The vast majority of companies involved in B2B marketing have e-newsletters. The majority of these seem not to target them in the same way they would an email marketing campaign. They are missing a trick.

All the reasons to segment lists go equally for e-newsletters as for email marketing campaigns, the only difference being that recipients would appear willing to spend longer assessing the publication before deciding whether to continue reading or delete it. 

This does not, of course, mean you can be more casual in producing an e-newsletter. All your skills with regards email marketing can, and perhaps should, be brought to bear in order for yours to be as productive as possible. 

You will want to have an e-newsletter rich in content, but all of it will not be attractive to all your subscribers. Whilst recipients will be more inclined to page down the content to find something of interest, if they find just a couple of items in 20 that they read, they could well look for another source for information.

Sort your content under headings that will appeal to certain sections of your subscribers. Be firm in your decisions. Then produce a number of e-newsletters which contain just those subjects that will be of interest to particular groups. Include a resumé of other items which could be of interest with click throughs for further information, and then include links to others.

You will have various content arranged in a number of e-newletters, but they will all consist of, perhaps, two full articles, three resumés and half a dozen brief descriptions with links.

As time goes on you will gain information on your subscribers’ preference and be able to target them to greater levels of accuracy. You will then get a much higher open rate and lower levels of unsubscribe.

I subscribe to a number of e-newsletters. There is one which started as a list of items, all with click throughs to ‘further details’. The latest, which gave rise to this post, included two items which were explained in some detail, a list headed ‘You May Be Interested In’ with briefer details and links, and at the bottom generic titles for other matter. It is just what I want.