Warm welcome:
Welcome back to Wood Newsletters! Last month, I talked about why email newsletters, though they’ve been around for a long time, are still an important part of a business’s marketing strategy. Social media marketing is ever changing, but that doesn’t mean an email newsletter needs to be scrapped. On the contrary, email newsletters have done a remarkable job of adapting to each stage of new technology.
In today’s newsletter, I want to share how the email newsletter is evolving and what part it can play today in the larger repertoire of business marketing.
I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to send me an email and share your thoughts!
Sincerely,
Leanne Wood
Writer and Owner, Wood Newsletters
When I was in college, I took a summer study trip to Italy. It was a highlight of my college experience, and I don’t think anyone who has been to the awe-inspiring Colosseum or who has wandered through St. Peter’s Basilica can ever forget that experience.
One of my favorite cities was Venice. A marvel of human engineering, the city is full of rich history and charming culture. A ride through the watery streets in a gondola is unforgettable!
Also unforgettable within the delightful Floating City are its adorable pigeons. At one time, these birds made their nests in trees, rock cliffs, and caves. But when man-made structures obtruded into their habitats, they didn’t migrate elsewhere or die off. Instead, they adapted to their new environments. They substituted church spires and crannies in elaborately decorated cathedrals for their old trees and cliffs. And now, what would Venice be without them? They are a tourist attraction in their own right.
Like pigeons, the email newsletter has also adapted in ingenious ways to their changing landscape. While we think of them purely in their digital form today, newsletters actually started out as a print version. Businesses would send a newsletter by what we now call “snail mail,” delivering it to the mailboxes of hundreds of potential customers. Newsletters have always been a bit more personal of a marketing technique than pure advertisements. Since their inception, they have focused on the activities of a particular individual or of a business. Newsletters even from their inception have made a more personal connection between the identity of the business itself and potential customers.
When the first email was sent in 1971, a whole new world of possibilities opened up for the newsletter. Instead of the long process of a piece of paper hand delivered to a mailbox, a newsletter could be sent to its recipient in mere seconds. While some used this new capability to introduce what we now know as spam, sending unsolicited emails to as many people as possible, regulations and user behavior quickly helped shape the email newsletter into something useful for the recipient.
In the mid-2000s, email marketing platforms like MailChimp or Constant Contact created technology to personalize a newsletter. One example of this kind of personalization is the inclusion of the recipient’s first name in the salutation. Another is the ability to group recipients into categories according to characteristics like product preferences, purchase history, or demographics. Personalization has allowed businesses to tailor their newsletters to clients’ specific needs, and it’s in this kind of personalization that the email newsletter will continue to evolve into the future.
The incredible thing about personalization is that it helps a business show all the more clearly how it can serve the needs of one individual. When a general newsletter goes out, it can be easy for one person to dismiss it as irrelevant to her. That newsletter may end up in the trash bin (whether a digital or literal one!). But sending a newsletter that addresses the specific concerns of one person is much more likely to get a response. That’s the newsletter that will open the recipient’s eyes to the ways that a business can solve the very problem she’s been wrestling with or ease the pain point she’s been feeling.
It’s for this reason that newsletters are so good at changing with the times. From a printed, snail-mailed copy to today’s personalized newsletters, these texts are better than ever at bridging the gap between clients not knowing a business to becoming customers of the business. In spite of the invention of email and social media, newsletters have never lost their ability to make the strong connection with clients necessary to bring in client business.
Feel free to get in touch if you think a newsletter can be helpful for your business.
