Do You Really Need a Customer Newsletter?

When you are considering your approach to content marketing, a customer newsletter often comes up in the conversation. However, I would hasten you to jump right into it just on the notion that you believe you should have one. A customer newsletter must do a few things in order to be taken seriously, in order for people to want to subscribe to it and order for you to publish a piece of content that is looked forward to as a valued piece of material from your audience.

Don’t Go Into It Half-Assed

You will have to excuse my language on this one but I have seen way to many brands that publish newsletters that are either blatantly boring and hardly thought-out or just so overwhelming that I let them pile up in my inbox without a second glance.

Don’t just put a newsletter together and blast it out to your email list because you can. Think through it. Do you really have something to say? What does the editorial calendar look like for the next 3, 6 or 12 months? What is the format going to look like? Are you going to announce new customers? Do you have a plan in place in order to do this on a regular fashion? Do you even have the resources to publish great content on a regular basis?

Answer all these questions and you should have a good idea whether you should wait or get right to it. If you are getting right to it, Valeria Maltoni wrote a great post on starting a customer newsletter. I love the idea of curating content and ideas from online forums like LinkedIn groups and Quora.

There Are Other Ways to Stay in Touch

One of the reasons I like customer newsletters so much is because I am a huge fan of nurturing. What people don’t often realize is that nurturing happens even after the sale. You need to keep your brand top of mind even after the check has been cashed and the money is in the bank.

It’s difficult for me to think of any business that does not rely on referrals or renewals. I shop at a retail store and they want me to come back. The next time I need a certain item, that store needs to ensure they are at the top of my mind as the place to go. Subscriptions to magazines, research and even blogs is reliant upon me being happy with what I receive so that I will renew when the contract is up or keep reading.

So, what else can you do besides a customer newsletter to stay in touch?

Your content plan must include more than a customer newsletter, especially if this is something that is still in question. Here are 8 other ways you can stay in touch:

1. Send emails to customers with whitepapers that are relevant to them. We often think of using whitepapers to generate leads and forget that our current customers may receive value from them as well. Just remember to leave out the form registration.
2. Invite customers to webinars. Webinars are great for generating leads but, like whitepapers, they are valuable to your customers as well.
3. Send them holiday gifts. Reach out during Thanksgiving (in the US anyways) to thank your customers to being loyal to your brand. Send them a card or a small gift just to show that you are thinking of them and they are important to you.
4. Create a survey to poll your customers. This is a great way to get feedback on the service you are providing and get a little extra knowledge of what is going on in their day to day lives. Consider adding an incentive to participate like $25 gift card to Amazon for the first 50 people that complete it.
5. Host an invite only event. I have found that executives really appreciate a dinner after work. It’s a great way to get people in a room with commonalities and just let your hair down. Talk work, talk family, talk whatever.
6. Connect with customers in the social forums. Are they on Twitter? Are they on Google+? Are they in the LinkedIn groups? Reach out, connect and start a conversation.
7. Subscribe to their newsletter. Maybe you don’t have a newsletter, but do your customers? Great way to see what they are talking about, how they are approaching topics and how they talk to their own customers.
8. Call them every once in awhile. In a previous company I worked for, we had thousands of clients and even more contacts so it was difficult to have personal connections regularly. The solution was to put the client contact list on a rotating schedule so that each client was called and checked up on at least every 3 months.

You don’t need a customer newsletter to connect and stay in touch with your customers and prospects. Think through your strategy very carefully before you put the wheels in motion and set out to publish one. You don’t want to be on a roll and 3 months from now not have the time, resources or any ideas of what to publish. Keeping promises and living up to expectations goes a lot further than simply putting something together and hitting the send key.

Are you using newsletters to engage and connect with your audience? How did you get started and how is it working out?