How to Get a High Return on Investment from Newsletters

Newsletters are perfect for staying in touch with your customer base, but did you know they're also perfect for generating a healthy return on investment? So many companies send newsletters as formalities, and so many others shy away from doing so because they fear the investment of newsletter development, printing and mailing. But when you employ the following strategies, you can reap major rewards from your newsletter investment in the form of profit. Keep reading to learn how to get the perfect return on investment from newsletters.

Add value

The first key to successful newsletter marketing is to make your newsletters valuable to your customers. Pack them with great advice, tips, tricks, industry secrets, and other information your customers can put to good use to make their lives better, easier, more fun or problem-free. Showcase customers and highlight those you've helped whenever possible. When your newsletters can do this, and present the information in an interesting and entertaining format, your customers will look forward to reading it when it comes in the mail. And getting customers to read your newsletter is the first step in the marketing process.

Market, but sparingly

Don't make every newsletter article an advertorial for your business. Instead, write genuine, informative articles, tidbits, tips, etc., that give away great advice for free. If customers feel that your newsletter is nothing more than a marketing tool, they won't trust your content – or your company. Instead, you can lightly pepper your content with mentions of products or services that can help specific situations. Better yet, reserve a shout box for the end of each article that briefly explains how one of your products or services remedies the situation described in the article. You can also market using boxes, coupon pages or a single, dedicated promotion page inserted somewhere into your newsletter. The key is to separate your content from your marketing as much as possible, with most of your newsletter devoted to content, so that you earn customer trust. Your marketing efforts only have to be relevant to the content. They'll see your ads, and they'll respond.

Reduce your initial investment

You can reduce your initial investment by trimming the pages of your newsletter down to four (front, back, two inside pages) or even printing a “newscard,” which is a newsletter printed on a postcard. You don't have to have six articles every month; you can have a single article and perhaps a tip box or customer showcase alongside your promotion. By reducing your initial investment, you leave more opportunity for a return on that investment.

Send to the right people

Do you have to send newsletters to every customer? Do you have to send newsletters every month? No, and no. While those situations might be ideal, the goal is return on investment. It might make more sense to send newsletters to your top 200 customers only, because they're the repeat buyers. It might be more profitable to send quarterly newsletters instead of monthly, depending on your industry and target audience. When you have a sound newsletter distribution strategy, your newsletter printing will almost always yield a healthy return on investment when you follow all the tips in this article.