What Type of Newsletter Should Your Company Distribute?

As you probably know, newsletters are a staple part of content marketing for B2B companies - 83% of B2B marketers use newsletters for content marketing. That statistic is made up of people who do things the old-fashioned way - printed newsletters - and the newer, tech-savvy way: eNewsletter. You should be using at least one of these to market your company: 90% of people prefer to receive company updates from newsletters, compared to 10% for social media.

Regardless of the type of newsletter you choose to send out, newsletters can:

• Help you generate awareness about your company and your product and service offerings
• Add an additional touchpoint
• Establish yourself as the local industry expert
• Increase your brand recall and association
• Advertise your promotional campaigns

The decision of which to choose is pretty neck-and-neck: when given a choice, 51% prefer reading company information on print, and 44% prefer email. This may shift as the younger generation enters the workforce: younger people respond better to emails and information on a company’s website better than they do direct mail appeals.

Both Newsletters and eNewsletters have their advantages and disadvantages. So, which should you be using to market your company?

Why Printed Newsletters?

Advantages:

• Higher perceived value: Not every company invests in printed newsletters anymore. When your recipients receive your printed newsletter, they’ll recognize the effort you put into producing them.
• Reliable delivery: Unlike eNewsletters, a printed newsletter won’t be caught in a spam filter. You can be pretty certain that your printed newsletters will reach your mailing list’s mailboxes, as long as you maintain your lists.
• Greater stickiness: According to research, pass-along readership can be as high as four-to-one for printed newsletters. And, even if they don’t share it, recipients may hang on to your newsletter for future reference, as many people do with direct mail pieces they receive.
• Increased coverage: Want to touch a couple of potential leads? Mail them your newsletter. You can’t add a random potential lead to your newsletter list in case they opted into your eNewsletter in some way.

Disadvantages:

• Time: It takes quite a bit of time to design the perfect print newsletter. Even worse, when you have your design perfected, you may find that it looks better on your computer screen than it does once it’s printed out.
• Access: Unlike digital marketing, recipients of direct mail can’t just click on a link to learn more about the topic you’re discussing. You may include QR codes and shortened URLs so they can learn more about whatever you’re discussing. But, some people will be too lazy to use them.
• Printing cost: To ensure that your newsletter appears professional, you’ll probably have to pay to have a printing company handle printing both the newsletter itself and the envelope it’s put in. Those costs can add up.

Why eNewsletters?

Advantages

• Convenience: Your eNewsletter recipient can access your eNewsletter from their desktop computer or their mobile phone, which they likely have with them at all times.
• Seamlessness: If the person reading your eNewsletter wants to learn more, all they have to do is click a link. No extra steps are involved.
• Better tracking: You can know how many people open your eNewsletter because the email marketing platform you use (probably) tracks that for you. It’s much harder to accurately measure how many people read your printed newsletter.

Disadvantages

• Email regulation compliance: There’s a lot more you have to do when sending out emails compared to mail pieces to ensure that your company doesn’t get fined.
• Easier to disregard: If a person sees your newsletter in their inbox, they can immediately delete it without reading more than the subject. They could also change their email settings so that your emails are always marked as spam, or unsubscribe from your emails altogether.

Our Opinion

You should be using at least one of the newsletter types. But honestly, you’re greatly limiting your potential if you only choose to use one of these distribution options. If you want to get the most out of your newsletters, use both. This allows people to access your information in the way that they prefer.

Plus, if you’re already doing one, it isn’t that much of a jump to do the other as well. You’ve already produced the content needed to fill your newsletter (blogs, company updates, promotions, relevant industry-related information, and the like). You can use that same content in the other form of your newsletter. To further increase the power of your newsletter, you should consider archiving all of your old newsletters on your website. Many businesses will convert their files to PDFs and do just that.

You Can Turn To Us!

If you don’t have the time to worry about producing a newsletter, that’s fine, we can do it for you (in both print and email!). Contact us today to learn more.