We have mentioned on these pages many times before that for many companies an eNewsletter (newsletter) gives a good return on investment. There are many side benefits, such an acceptance of the From address giving a higher open rate for marketing emails.
To make a newsletter work costs a significant amount of money and a big investment of time so even though the ROI will more than justify the outlay, you will want to wring every bit of value from it. Further, a little bit of planning can provide you with information that would take weeks to return from any other source.
Content is king as ever but that does not mean it can’t be manipulated. One of the simpler methods, and none are complicated, is to limit the copy on the newsletter but have a click through to further information. Don’t use that phrase though. ‘Discover what others never tell you’ sounds a lot more exciting.
Let’s go with one I have been involved with. I subscribe to both the newsletter and email marketing list of a software company which wanted to bring in a new line of products. The newsletter contained an article on new developments in the field and there was a click through to ‘Further Information Here’. The landing page described one of the new products and contained a box where I could ask for a newsletter specific to the new product.
The company will have been able to gauge, albeit not precisely at this stage, the degree of interest around the new product from their regular customers. The additional subscription would have helped there as well. In subsequent newsletters we were treated to similar click throughs where there was additional information on some of the aspects of the new software. Few click throughs would have, I guess, put that particular facility back until the next update.
You will have to play fair with your subscribers though. The content must be sufficient to satisfy and the click throughs should go through to a landing page that contains considerable additional information.
If you want to know whether readers are interested in a particular subject then another way is to put a picture of it on the newsletter with the offer of more images if they click the particular one that interests them. The returns will point you in the right direction.
I’ve seen this system used with a bi-monthy magazine which had a newsletter sent in the alternate months. Whilst there were interesting articles which were complete there were always a number of others which had click throughs for more. A couple of issues later the magazine covered a couple of the subjects. It was clear the editor was looking for ideas.
It is vital that you use a newsletter for the purpose that the subscribers expect. Your desire for email marketing data should never become too obvious. It will soon be picked up by your readers and if they unsubscribe from your newsletter they will do the same for your email marketing list.
