Q: With everyone doing more and more marketing online today, should I move my newsletter online too?
A: Based on nearly a decade of marketing experience working on my own businesses and also helping other business owners growing their businesses, plus seeing the results they get from their online and offline marketing I can say, “You gotta be kidding, right?”
You need to be changing your business so that you can afford to be offline as well as online. Success guru Earl Nightingale said, “If you are ever in doubt about what to do in a situation then look at what everyone else is doing and do the opposite.”
There are three very important reasons as to why you should not follow the herd by moving your newsletter online.
1) 65% of people say they get too many emails in a day to read them all. Epsilon.
2) The open rate on email is 1/6th that of mail. Sending a printed newsletter is SIX times more likely to get read. That gives you a huge advantage in terms of potential response, likelihood of response and also relationship building
3) Because you spent money to get that newsletter to them it is much more respected. By definition – money spent earns respect and shows respect. You value your customers enough to spend real money to print and post them your newsletter. It is more valuable in their eyes than an email newsletter that someone probably slapped together in 20 minutes then hit the send button on.
4) People get ‘more’ from physical things. There was a study by Bangor University and they found a much deeper level of emotional processing and more activity in the area of the brain associated with visual and spatial processing, improving the embedding of images and ideas when they received a direct mail compared with electronic communications.
That is profound – people pay more attention to mailed newsletters than they do to electronic ones and a much more likely to respond when there is a something tangible.
5) In Australia, many people only receive four or so pieces of mail a week including bills. (Most Americans get a piece of personal mail 6 times a year). Some 60% of consumers enjoy checking their mail box and receiving mail. Do you reckon getting a newsletter in the mail addressed to them might be pretty exciting and not competing against too much clutter?
You can use your newsletter to create More Repeat Business and Referrals for your business. Go To www.morebusinessandreferrals.com and download, “The Business Owner’s Guide to Getting More Repeat Business and Referrals” to find out our exact blueprint to grow your business.