7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Send a Newsletter

We’ve all been on the receiving end of these (and no doubt ‘unsubscribed’ from some), but newsletters have a key role to play for the small business owner and can offer a number of benefits:

1. Building and maintaining relationships: Newsletters are an excellent way to stay in touch with clients and keep them informed about your business. By providing valuable and relevant content on a regular basis, you can build trust and credibility – your clients can feel like they’re getting to know you personally and will get a better idea of who you are and what you’re about.

2. Increase brand awareness: Newsletters offer the opportunity to increase brand recognition and awareness among your clients through the use of your logo and branding.

3. Promote products and services: Newsletters can be an effective way to promote new products or services (and therefore generate sales). You can include information about special offers, discounts, and other promotions that might interest your clients (maybe include a QR code for a direct link) – it doesn’t need to be a ‘hard sell’, but your regular newsletter reminds clients who you are and what you do when they need your services.

4. Establish credibility and expertise: By including insightful and informative content in your newsletter, you can build credibility and trust with your clients as they will see that you ‘know your stuff’.

5. Drive traffic: Including links to your website (and other social media platforms) in your newsletter can drive traffic to your site and help improve your search engine rankings.

6. You’re in control: Your newsletter lands straight in your audience’s inbox and as such is not subject to social media platform algorithms and changes.

7. Building a subscriber list: Not only is this invaluable for marketing and communication purposes, but as it doesn’t rely on social media platforms it offers you an alternative way of communicating with customers.

Key things to consider when preparing your newsletter:

Regularity – whether it’s monthly, bimonthly or quarterly, set a schedule and stick to it

Keep it friendly and accessible – try to avoid jargon and keep it ‘chatty’

Tell a story – let your readers understand you and your business better Share links for other businesses or services you’ve come across that might be of interest to your readers

Keep it brief – it doesn’t need to be War & Peace, just enough to hold their interest without them getting bored and hitting ‘unsubscribe’! Don’t forget to add a sign-up form to your website and don’t stress over your number of subscribers - just remember each one is a real person and potential customer. There are a number of email marketing systems out there designed to make the process simple (check out Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign) and if you don’t have time to do it yourself, consider outsourcing!