Sending out regular e-newsletters can be an efficient and effective way to keep in touch with your customers, clients, employees, members, donors — or pretty much anyone else who is important to your organization.

E-newsletters have a mix of marketing purposes, depending on the type of business you operate. For example, you may want to offer highlights of industry news, give advice on your areas of expertise, remind customers of the great values you offer, or support your advertising campaign. You may want to stay in touch with board members and donor bases, letting them know of the good work you’re doing. Or you may want to keep your employees informed about company news.

Accordingly, defining your audience and your purpose for communicating is “step one” in the development of your e-newsletter. Other elements include:

A Good List

The closer your relationship to the recipient, the better your e-newsletter will be received. Sending to strangers is spam, and bad for your image. Sending to those who have purchased from you, say, in the last 12 to 24 months is a better target audience.

A Distribution Service

You can send your e-newsletter out on your own, but many prefer to use an e-news service provider (such as MailChimp, Constant Contact or others) to make the process easier to manage. An upside: e-mail distribution services have in-built analytics that can give you reports on opens, clicks and other details that show the results of your mailing – which is important marketing data.

Copy and Design

A good rule of thumb for this type of marketing communication is to provide value, not just sell your products. Give helpful information, then point to the products and services you provide that solve your customers’ problems. Additionally, whether you’re selling, alerting or advising, the design of your e-newsletter should fit your brand identity. The design also involves a number of technical details, including which email clients need to be supported, whether it can be viewed in a browser, or whether it can be read on any size device (which is especially important now that e-mail is often read on smartphones).

If you’d like help developing your e-newsletter, please let us know. We’re 24 Communications, an advertising agency in Montgomery, Alabama. We can create the marketing copywriting and graphic design, as well as navigate through the technical details leading up to scheduling your time to send.