Content writing as part of digital marketing is useful when you want to not only showcase your product or service and its features but also talk about ways in which customers can benefit from it and other relevant details. An increasing number of start-ups set up blogs, webpages, social media handles, and so on to increase their outreach. Email marketing is one such method that is both old-school but extremely effective as the emails are sent directly to customers email inboxes, and there is no need to strategize ways to maximise traffic in your website or social media account. Instead of sending individual emails, you could create mailing lists as per your convenience. There is also an option of setting up a subscription service with a link to join on your website or social media account. This would automatically register the customer in your mailing list, and any updates or new posts would send a notification email to their inbox. This is an extremely convenient and free service that you can utilise.
However, do not limit your marketing efforts to just emails and newsletters as you may not be able to gain optimum results from your work, especially if your output is a monthly email newsletter. Too many companies rely only on this monthly newsletter subscription approach, publishing a newsletter on a fixed date every month, even if they have no new updates or information to send to their followers. In this manner, the company will find themselves forced to compile and produce content as per the deadline, and not to suit the needs and interests of their subscribers.
Monthly Newsletters and where they go wrong:
- Saturated with Content-
Nobody likes long emails that meander and beat around the bush without getting to the point. Similarly, email marketing should be kept short and to the point for it to have a good impact. Nobody will scroll through several articles, links and long paragraphs of text in order to get to know your brand better and learn something useful about your products. Brevity is essential in all forms of communication, and when the content you have devoted so much time and effort to is sent out as part of a long email, it is very likely that it will get lost and will return very little value.
- Quality takes a backseat
While trying to generate maximum content and fit it all into one email, people often forget to focus on quality content and instead publish unrelated and un-newsworthy material that is not engaging. When marketers are desperate to send mail on specific date, they will resort to producing content that could potentially damage your company’s potential and negatively impact your future endeavours and campaigns.
- Can result is bad timing-
While saving content for the end of the month or for the particular date on which you release your company’s newsletter, you could miss out on golden opportunities to convert. Sending out information and updates as they occur in real-time will keep your subscribers engaged, and make them feel involved in the process. This aspect is particularly relevant if you work in a competitive market or industry, or if you have time-sensitive offers and promotions (in the case of e-commerce firms).
- Not reaching the right engaged audience
Even if the quality of your content is top-notch and the monthly newsletter is colourful, informative and engaging, it will all go to waste if it does not reach the intended number of people. The probability that your subscribers will wait with bated breath and regularly follow your content, especially when it is a monthly missive, is very low.
- Just One Opportunity to Convert
Even though you would be releasing one newsletter per month, making that twelve updates a year, you only get one chance to convert someone into a regular customer, until the next month. It takes quite a lot of luck to attract sales from your newsletter, unless you work in an e-commerce firm that releases periodic updates via email. Furthermore, the sales will be clustered around the time of publication of the newsletter and not evenly distributed throughout the month. This will lead to logistical or customer grievance handling issues and a rush to handle and fulfil orders, especially if the company is a new or small.
If you choose to publish a monthly newsletter, always make sure that you also send regular, targeted email campaigns throughout the month to complement your efforts. Email marketing alone is not a sufficient marketing strategy, and is merely an afterthought or something you opt for to add value to your existing and ongoing efforts. Don’t make up things to convey just for the sake of it, and if you do in fact have a message, don’t keep it waiting. Seize the opportunity, put what you have to say out there and get returns immediately.
