During the past decades, companies have relied on traditional advertising like radio catchy jingles, TV commercials, Press advertising, telemarketing, etc. The technique is to interrupt the radio listener, tv viewer, newspaper reader, with an attention grabbing ad to convince him to buy our product.
However, the consumer is getting immune to this traditional advertising, just completely ignoring the ads or blocking them with technologies like TiVo or DVR. Every day gets tougher to get the consumer’s attention, and the best way is adding value to the message.
The value – attention axiom works perfectly in email marketing. To build a solid permission –based subscribers list you must provide value, either by producing great content or through big discounts or offers in products that the subscribers are really interested in.
It is this perfect combination of value+permission what makes email marketing get great conversion rates and be a way to strengthen the relationship with your subscribers, getting your casual clients into loyal clients and loyal clients into evangelizers of your products.
Once the importance of value+permission is clear, here you have some tips on how to add more value to your newsletters:
1. Establish the right expectations
The subscription process is the first step of your strategy to get news subscribers. It is very important that you set at this point the right expectations about the content that the subscriber is going to get and the value that it contains for the reader. Also provide links to past issues of your newsletter so that subscribers can see exactly what to expect.
2. Have a Personality
The fact that you are producing a corporate newsletter doesn’t mean it can’t have a personality. You want the reader to feel that there is a real person on the other end of the newsletter. Establish someone as the editorial face and allow him to give it a more informal language, so that he gets closer to your subscribers.
3. Tricks, Tips and Best Practices
B2B newsletter readers love tips. No matter what profession, workers are always interested in receiving practical ideas and best practices that they can really use.
4. Statistics and Benchmarking
Your subscribers want to know how they are doing compared with other companies in their market. Providing Benchmarking information and industry statistics will keep your subscribers attention.
5. FAQ / Ask the expert
Articles devoted to answer questions are a great way to generate the interest of your subscribers and to establish yourself and your company as an expert in your field.
6. Case of study
Readers never get tired of practical examples of success stories and strategies, and they always want more and more.
7. Use your Click-Through Rate (CTR) data
Monitoring which articles are giving you the most click help you to refine your topics and write more about the most interesting for your subscribers.
8. Use surveys
Send surveys a few times a year asking directly to your subscribers which content they prefer.
9. Partners, clients and experts
Solicit articles from your clients, partners and industry experts.
