An email newsletter is one of the two most important sources for information and advice for small and medium businesses, according to a study entitled, “Optimizing Email Newsletters for Small/Medium Businesses” released by Bredin Business Information, Inc. (BBI) in 2007.
According to the study of over 300 executives …
email newsletters rank highly as sources of information, beating out websites and blogs, and matching print media for importance.
Although the study specifically focused on small to medium (less than 500 person) businesses, it would be safe to extract that out to small to midsize ad agencies. Email newsletters are becoming more important than newsletters.
Some highlights from this study:
- 83% of respondents indicated that email newsletters were either very important or important sources
- “How to” information (40%) was the preferred form of content
- 65% of respondents said they read some issues thoroughly and skim others
- The most important in deciding whether or not to read a vendor’s email newsletter, 64% said it was who the newsletter was from
- The top reasons for stopping an email newsletter? Irrelevant content (63%)
- The vast majority of small business executives want to receive their email newsletters weekly (45%) or monthly (34%)
- Monday was the preferred day to receive an email newsletter
Ad agencies should be using this information to redesign their email newsletters to get the best possible response. And agencies that have been to busy with client work to develop an eNewsletter for themselves should reconsider investing the time. The effort is worth it. Just remember to keep it simple. Consistency is more important than perfection.
Check out the complete survey results “Optimizing Email Newsletters for Small/Medium Businesses”
A great, super simple idea starter from VerticalResponse to help build your agency’s email newsletter list using business cards.
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Michael Gass, agency new business consultant, primarily to small and mid-size advertising agencies, utilizing both traditional and new media tools.
Newsletter subscriber memberships are a great way of staying connected with new customers. Webmasters should also include a neat free gift, along with a lifetime subscribership registration to compliment services offered for repeat visitors.