4 reasons why newsletters should be part of your brand communication strategy

The newsletter is undoubtedly an oldie-but-goodie. And whilst it may seem dated compared to the vast array of new, ahead of the curve, digital and social media communications that are available today, the traditional format of the newsletter still holds great value in your brand communication strategy. It helps to set the tone for your business, build networks to keep clients and customers engaged, and showcase your expertise. With 78% of surveyed marketing specialists experiencing a boost in email engagement between 2020 and 2021, this is a strategy you don’t want to miss out on.

Don’t believe us? Just ask Neil Patrick Harris, who has recently endeavoured to provide his fans with a weekly newsletter that delves into the ‘culture of curiosity’, offering insight into his top picks of food and drink, design, entertainment and experiences. In essence, Neil Patrick Harris’ Wondercade newsletter is perfectly designed to create engagement that feels personal to the audience. By creating a consistent line of communication, it keeps his following up to date with content that has been orchestrated to continuously sell his personal brand. In an understated way, his newsletter nurtures and cultivates relationships rather than land pushy, hard sales.

So what can we learn from this? We have compiled our top four takeaways that perfectly encapsulate the reasons why newsletters should be a consistent part of your comms strategy, no matter how ‘old-school’ they may seem.

1. Setting your tone of voice

Newsletters provide a great opportunity for you to really set the tone for your brand and give a real feel of your company’s personality. Without the direct motive of driving sales, an effective newsletter will feel personal to the recipient, giving them a sense of who you are through targeted insights and updates that act as a window to the core pillars of your business.

You can also send your newsletter from the company team or a specific employee, depending on the core messages you wish to convey through email marketing. Delivering strategic email campaigns designed to elevate your credibility in your industry will help to drive engagement and traffic to your site, as well as generate leads.

2. Building and maintaining relationships

Maintaining consistent contact with your clients and customers in an informative manner also helps to build trust amongst your audiences. Email is one of the most effective ways to create a regular touchpoint with your clients and potential customers, but it can be difficult to get right. To deliver results when it comes to email marketing, you must understand your audience and refine your approach to your wider business goals.

Regular newsletters are also a great way of supporting other marketing channels, such as social media and content marketing. In fact, 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters. By collecting and sharing targeted content through email communications that will drive engagement with your audiences, this will further cement your client and customer relationships, working to prevent drop off and pull together your wider business goals.

3. Measuring Success

Perhaps most importantly, newsletters with regular and consistent sends are a great way to monitor engagement and measure success. By exploring what content generates engagement and what doesn’t, you can begin to optimise each campaign – carrying out testing wherever possible to uncover new insight and learnings which can be incorporated into every send.

Wherever possible, it’s vital for your business to uncover learnings from the results you drive through email marketing activity, in order to stay up to date with efficient reporting and next steps to really refine your marketing strategy.

4. Showcasing your expertise

Finally, by using newsletters to build brand trust amongst your audiences, you can also translate this to build consumer trust in your products, services, and ultimately your expertise.

There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of bragging, right? As long as you use this medium to write about how you’ve solved a problem that others may be experiencing, that way it is educational and relevant to your readers. Nobody wants to know that it’s Janet from accounts’ birthday! By showcasing your business’ successes as regular updates within your newsletter comms, this offers a chance for you to communicate why you are the best choice for your customers to deliver the product or service they require of you.

Takeaways

So for all you sceptics out there, the newsletter is most certainly not dead, and this is your sign to incorporate newsletters as part of your wider marketing and brand communications strategy. It’s easy to plan for with a budget of any size, no matter how big or small – and you can clearly achieve a lot with a well planned email strategy all while keeping a close eye on audience engagement and ROI.

If you need a hand creating an email marketing strategy that will drive tangible results, we’re here to help. Check out how our experts can make email marketing work for you, or get in touch today to find out more about our wider services at YS.