When and Why Your Business Should Consider Using an Email Newsletter Writing Service
If you haven’t been paying close attention, then “email newsletter” may sound a little America Online, a little Hotmail...a little 2002.
The reality is, though, that email has never been a more valuable tool for content delivery. Sure, the world has become obsessed with short-form video content, and we’ve seen enough talking heads tell us what they ate in a day to last us multiple lifetimes. Social media’s power is well documented, and it remains a valuable tool in the content marketer’s arsenal. However, an overreliance on those tools could prove costly.
Email offers the solution.
Why is an engaged email audience more important than ever?
Though a large following on various social media platforms is a tremendous asset, it also presents tremendous risk. All the hard work and consistency required to build that audience could be for naught.
Why?
Ultimately, you are operating at the whims of any given social media platform.
The audience you built isn’t owned. It’s rented. If LinkedIn, X, Instagram, or TikTok dissolved tomorrow, your audience would disappear, and you wouldn't have an easy way to contact and re-engage them. That’s a massive risk, and it’s one we’ve become all too accustomed to taking despite the warning signs flashing before our eyes. Social media platforms frequently de-platform or suspend accounts. TikTok faces the threat of banishment in the United States. And sometimes, less controversially, platforms just fade from popularity.
The conclusion is simple: you need to find a way to own your audience, make it portable, and ensure you can encourage customers to follow you wherever you go.
Building an email list allows you to accomplish all those things without dependency on a platform. Sure, you might use an email platform, but decoupling your audience from it is as simple as a spreadsheet export.
How do I build an engaged email audience?
Email newsletters should not be confused with traditional email marketing. To build an engaged audience, you need to offer something of value to the reader directly in the email. We’re not talking about emails advertising sales or new product arrivals, but valuable, insightful, or entertaining intellectual property.
Don’t be the email they’ve been meaning to unsubscribe from. Be the email they can’t wait to see in their inbox.
If you provide the reader with engaging content, you’ll have ample opportunity to plug your product or service in an organic way that doesn’t push readers to the unsubscribe link lurking at the bottom of the page. What can you engage them with? There are myriad options, among them:
Relevant news
Timely analysis
Calendar curation
Entertaining commentary
Whatever the path, the underlying formula is the same: understand the reader’s interests and needs, and satisfy them consistently. If you can build that initial momentum, a little FOMO goes a long way in growing faster.
What kind of businesses should consider starting an email newsletter? And how can they determine what kind of content to offer?
With the right approach and some creativity, almost any business can benefit from offering an email newsletter. The concept may seem foolish to some businesses, but by focusing on the core formula - understanding your audience’s interests and satisfying them - a newsletter can be a valuable channel for building the top of your sales funnel. Consider some examples.
Sell sports sunglasses directly to consumers? Unite people in their shared athletic goals by starting a newsletter that details the pursuits of athletes who wear your products.
Offer SEO services? Provide a weekly or monthly newsletter detailing SEO best practices and how they’re shifting.
Financial advisor? Share vital market commentary and personal finance considerations corresponding with relevant events.
P2P marketplace or auction house? Offer a regular exploration of pertinent market trends that buyers and sellers should know about.
Provide your customers with information they can ill afford to miss. Appeal to emotions or to needs that are most important to them. Or provide them with unique entertainment intersecting with their hobbies and interests. If you can do one of these things, you’ve created a reason for them to subscribe.
When your business should consider using an email newsletter writing service
Perhaps your organization is set up perfectly to accommodate the production of a new email newsletter. If that’s the case, then more power to you. But in many cases, you might benefit from some third-party assistance. Here are some telltale signs that you might need an email newsletter writing service:
Lean team. You run a small organization where everyone wears multiple hats and works to the extent of their capacity, but you know you could benefit from running a great newsletter. Or, you might be part of a large organization where capacity and resources are already well allocated, and it’s hard to see how newsletter writing responsibilities fit in.
Concept, but no know-how. You have a terrific concept for a winning newsletter, but you don’t know much about how to set it up, structure it, format it, and deliver it to maximize results.
Great list, but no concept. Your company has accumulated a massive email list, but you’re not doing much with it because you’re focused on other organizational priorities. It might be time to tap that incredible asset.
Churning subscribers. You’re losing subscribers more frequently than you’re gaining them. Whether that’s due to excessively spammy sales emails or a newsletter that doesn’t quite hit the mark, you need to reassess what you’re doing and stop the bleeding as soon as possible.
If one or a few of these sound like your organization, it’s likely time to consider engaging an experienced team to bring your newsletter to life. You’ll be glad you did. Here’s why.
Why your business should consider using an email newsletter writing service
Producing engaging content on a regular cadence is no small feat. If you manage a small organization or even a large one without dedicated resources to writing this type of content, pursuing it might mean distracting certain employees from their core function. And if they can’t dedicate the requisite focus to the newsletter, it might be doomed to fail.
Fortunately, an email newsletter writing service will engage with your organization to own and manage the newsletter function, minimizing the burden on your team. There are several reasons to consider working with an email newsletter writing service:
Time savings. As discussed above, writing a strong newsletter is time intensive, and a cadence as frequently as weekly could place more time demands on your organization than you’d prefer. By using a service, the time spent structuring, drafting, and publishing the newsletter is owned externally.
Organizational focus. Maintenance of organizational focus goes hand in hand with time savings. Without needing to dedicate time to writing the newsletter, your employees can focus entirely on core responsibilities.
Adherence to best practices. The high likelihood is that a third-party newsletter writing service has visibility to the performance of a greater number of newsletters than anyone in your organization. As a result, that service should be more adept at incorporating newsletter best practices, including structure, formatting, and deliverability considerations. In delegating to them, you ensure that keeping up with the latest trends in the newsletter world is their responsibility and not yours.
Consultative assistance. Thanks to that greater visibility, a third-party service may be able to offer your organization valuable consultation on how to incorporate offers, advertisements, and plugs into your newsletter. Similarly, they may have suggestions on how to grow your list and convert readers into customers, which is ultimately the objective at the core of your efforts. If you’re unsure where to begin, they can also help you formulate a successful concept.
Who can I work with to write my company’s email newsletter?
The team at ThoughtLede has experience writing engaging newsletters with strong open rates from satisfied audiences. Reach out today to work with us to build a must-subscribe newsletter that will be the talk of your industry.
Your community is out there. It’s time to bring them together under your banner without depending on fickle social media platforms.