Your internet marketing investment is wasted without an e-newsletter.

Your e-newsletter is read 12 times a year and your web site only once.

Toby Beresford lists the top 10 reasons why you should be thinking about your e-newsletter first and your web site second. Dreamscheme Network’s July E-Newsletter sent with MicroAid E-Newsletter tool hits home
Dreamscheme Network’s July E-Newsletter sent with MicroAid E-Newsletter tool hits home

In reverse order:

10. Direct to inbox wherever they are - your e-newsletter will catch people whether at the office, at home or on the move. Everyone likes to check their email, even when they are on holiday.

9. Suits busy customers - lets face it most people are busy in their day - a visit to a web site requires effort - to open the browser, to find the home page, to navigate the site. To receive a newsletter requires no effort - it just appears in our inbox. That’s the reason E-mail is the ‘killer application’ of the web, not web sites.

8. Easier to create. While a web page might take a designer ages, a good e-newsletter can be written by anyone who can enter information on a web form. Certainly with an easy to use tool like School Newsletter, it’s no longer just the professionals who benefit from this marketing approach.

7. One more thought a month. Even if they delete your e-newsletter as soon as it hits their inbox it means they’ve had to think about you one extra time this month than they otherwise would have.

6. Allows emotional engagement. You can tickle the heart strings with a good newsletter story - engaging people in a different way than a web site whose primary job is to serve specific functions i.e. buy an item or make a donation. Your web site can’t interrupt potential supporters or customers with a “hello, only me…” in the same way.

5. Idiot proof. Anyone can receive an email, not everyone can find your web site. It may sound crazy but getting to your web site is a struggle was it www.microaid.com or www.microaid.net or www.micro-aid.com - oh I give up!

4. Creates word of mouth marketing. People forward newsletters on. It’s so easy people do it all the time - they hit the Forward button on an e-newsletter and suddenly your organisation and its mission reach a whole new audience.

3. News is fresh and interesting. Web sites don’t do news well - unless you’re very organised your web site is already well out of date by the time anyone goes online to read it. An e-newsletter on the other hand can go from author to reader in seconds.

2. Familiar layouts and structure. An e-newsletter with good photos and stories takes advantage of 100s of years of proven expertise by journalists all over the world in communicating news. With a good E-Newsletter tool like School Newsletter, adding photos is easy when layout and resizing is all done for you.

1. People may visit your web site once a year but they’ll receive your E-Newsletter 12 times year - that’s twelve times more chances to impress them.

* Original article by Toby Beresford, can be found at MicroAid.Com