By definition, establishing a good relationship with your customers includes developing good communication. If you have hundreds or even thousands of customers, though, it can be hard to speak to each one individually. Newsletters are a great way to communicate with groups of your customers at the same time while maintain a personable and friendly tone.

There are many advantages to newsletters:

  • They allow you to communicate company changes and news to customers in a friendly, non-intrusive way.
  • They allow your customers to keep you in mind.
  • They allow you to develop your branding strategy.
  • They add value for the customer. In many cases, you can add useful advice, tips and information to your company newsletters.
  • They make it easy to see how well your marketing is working. You cannot see how many people read a newspaper ad or direct mail newsletter. However, you can see how many people want to receive your newsletter – and how many want to keep getting your newsletter. If lots of readers start opting out, you know that you need to rework the message you are sending.

    If you have a good CRM program in place, such as Relenta CRM, you should be able to send a newsletter quite easily to all the customers who request one. You can even use Relenta CRM to design a newsletter template to make your newsletter easier to send. If you are just considering newsletters for your company, here are some things to keep in mind:
  • You cannot just send newsletters to customers. By law, any unsolicited newsletters are spam and you can easily get into legal trouble by sending newsletters to customers who do not want to receive advertisements. Always get customers to opt in and sign up for your newsletters. You may, however, offer your customers a discount or a free report or some other gift to encourage them to sign up. To comply with current laws, make sure that each copy of your newsletter allows your customers to opt out of the newsletter, if they wish to do so.
  • How many newsletters? Many companies assume that they should have just one company newsletter, but this is not always the case. If you have a good CRM plan in place, you might notice that your customers are divided into one or two groups – maybe customers who always buy specific products or customers who have not purchased anything yet. Different groups of customers may require different types of newsletters.
  • How often? A newsletter takes some time to write and create. You cannot send out one too frequently – you likely cannot spend all that time, and you might annoy customers with too-frequent mailings. Figure out how often you can send out a newsletter, and how often your customers want to read it.