Welcome back to our ongoing discussion about email marketing. Yesterday we talked about postcard and catalog emails and their business applications, and today we're going to cover another important form of email marketing. So let's get right into it.

Email Newsletters

This type of email is a bit more complicated and takes more time and effort to create and send than previous forms of email, but it can really help build a relationship with your customers. It also can help your establish you or your business as an expert in your field. Due to their size and complexity, you usually won't send out a full email newsletter more than once a month, which makes it easier to assemble all the information required to put a good email newsletter together.

First and foremost, you'll want to keep in mind that an e-newsletter is going to be mostly editorial content and very light on actually advertising (the lighter the better). You should be aiming for about 80% editorial content and 20% advertising, or even 90% - 10% if you can. Essentially the bulk of the newsletter will be made up of informative articles, case studies and tips that will be helpful to your prospects and customers. This will help establish you as a trusted and knowledgeable source in your field. Why is this beneficial? Think about it, who would you rather hire or purchase from: Someone who is a knowledgeable and respected expert on the product or service you require, or someone who you have never heard of and may or may not know anything about the product or service you're purchasing?

You'll want to send this email out regularly, quarterly at the very least... but as mentioned before you won't want to send it out more than once a month. Email newsletters tend to be larger and require time to go through, and recipients on your list will not want to spend the time required to go through the newsletter more than once a month. This type of email can be great for businesses who have a subscription model; your regular newsletter can remind your customers of the value you provide to them and make them more likely to renew when their subscription is due.  Businesses (like Lifeline) who typically have a larger value product and a longer sales process can benefit greatly from email newsletters too, because their regular emails can help reinforce the quality of the solution that your company is providing to prospects as well as keep your business name fresh in their minds.

Well, originally this was supposed to only be a two part series, but it turns out there is just far too much to say about the two other types of email marketing.  So make sure you don't miss tomorrow's final post (for the real this time I promise)  where we'll be discussing a powerful form of email marketing called Personal Relationship Emails.