Blog - Daily Thoughts

Newsletters and mailing lists are still considered two of the most effective digital marketing instruments today. While a mailing list isn’t a new instrument to use when it comes to promoting products, services, and websites online, the instrument itself has improved rapidly these last couple of years. Advanced targeting, better newsletter content, and better tracking are among the features you can expect from a modern newsletter platform.

Even when you’re not trying to sell products and services through your site, having a newsletter can still be very rewarding. Whether you run a personal blog, a news site, or a business site, here are four reasons why you need to create a newsletter for your site.

Connecting with the Audience

A newsletter is a great tool for building a strong(er) relationship with the audience. Instead of hoping for your viewers to return to your site for more content, you send information – teasers – about the new articles and resources you post on your site using newsletters. The newsletter, in turn, attracts visitors and helps you retain most of your customers.

Thanks to modern mailing list tools, you can take this type of relationship to the next level. Instead of sending the same newsletter content to all of your readers, you can now choose to customize the content of the newsletter depending on the recipients. You can add specific contents or elements based on the recipients’ interests.

Maintaining a healthy newsletter is also a fantastic way of generating recurring traffic to your site. Newsletters are very effective in retaining an audience. Your recipients are already interested in your content; that’s why they subscribed to your newsletter in the first place. You can keep them coming back for more content with your newsletter.

Promote Your Social Media

Mailing lists are also great for expanding your reach online, including boosting your social media reach. Adding social media accounts and a strong call to action to your newsletter is a sure-fire way of boosting your number of followers online.

This isn’t a new trick either. A lot of businesses are using the same approach to convert their massive newsletter subscribers into social media followers. It is also an approach that works really well when you are just getting started with developing your online presence. Asking subscribers to follow you on different social media platforms will help you gain the traction you need in the beginning.

The way you get recipients attracted in following you on social media is by asking questions, arousing discussions, and through methods like social media contests and special offers. Get them to engage with any of your social media accounts. The rest is easy from that point.

Another Digital Asset

Don’t forget that a successful mailing list is another digital asset you can monetize. When you have thousands of subscribers, selling advertising space on your site directly to advertisers gets easier. You can share the number of subscribers you have as one of the metrics used to define the reach of your site.

Many blogs and websites offer advertising space and boast the number of subscribers they have as a key metric. Knowing that you have plenty of subscribers alone is more than enough to convince advertisers to place their ads; knowing that they can reach those subscribers directly is even more appealing.

You don’t have to add big ads to the newsletter. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t. The ads you share through your mailing list must be as subtle as they can be. This way, you won’t risk losing your audience and can continue to develop a healthy newsletter to market.

It’s Easy

There is really no reason NOT to create a newsletter today, especially when you consider how easy it is to develop your own mailing list. You don’t even have to spend a lot of money to start your own newsletter. Mailing list solutions offer the tools you need to start getting subscribers, composing great emails, and growing your audience.

When you consider the benefits you get from developing a successful newsletter, the fact that you can get started easily – and for free – is certainly a huge plus. With every subscriber you get and every newsletter you send, you are growing your site and its audience too.

Of course, it is one more task to complete. Running a site is difficult as it is, so managing a newsletter on top of that may not be something you want to do. However, the time and energy you invest into developing a successful newsletter is well worth the long-term benefits you get in return. After all, the people subscribed to your newsletter are your most loyal customers.

It is easy to see why newsletters are considered very effective. Even when you have no products and services to sell, investing time and money into developing your own newsletter is still very rewarding in the long run.