This month I’ve decided to tackle the question raised by a number of PILMMA members recently: “Should I send my firm’s newsletter out by email or by direct mail?”
Of course, it is a given that if you aren’t sending out a firm newsletter at all, you should be. Newsletters are a tried and true marketing tool to help you stay ever present in your client’s, former client’s and referral community’s minds.
You can create these simple gems in house, farm them out to vendors, or even use the monthly templates PILMMA provides in your monthly Members Toolkit swipe and
deploy files.
But once you have decided to start sending newsletters out, you might be wondering whether you can get by with sending them out via email or if you should go through the time and expense to send them out in paper form. The answer, in a nutshell, is you should really send them out in print form if at all possible. Here’s the rationale:
1) People are inundated with Emails, so it’s difficult to differentiate yourself: Believe it or not, the latest numbers indicate that people are sending out 281 Billion emails across the globe per day! According to Livewire.com’s recent research, the average person receives 121 emails per day. (Heinz Tschabitscher, Livewire.com 1/2/19) Unfortunately, the current open rate for emails in North America is only 34.1 percent. In fact, a whopping 49.7% of most people’s daily email is relegated to their spam folders!
Not to mention that most people are doing more and more of their screen time on their smartphones, and the open rate for mobile phones is currently only 18 percent. That means that a lot of great emails are lost in spam-land and are never opened at all. What good is a fantastic newsletter if few of your clients or prospective clients are actually opening their emails, or if your Newsletter is being sent straight to their spam?
2) Print newsletters are less likely to be deleted or disregarded: One recent study showed a staggering 80% of consumers always read print newsletters they receive from organizations they have a relationship with. Those are fantastic odds! If you are sending newsletters to your current clients, prior clients, and others in the community that you have referral relationships with, then there is a strong likelihood that your print newsletters will be received and read. (and hopefully shared with others)
3) Print Newsletters are more likely to help you build relationships/connections with the reader. Print newsletters show your personal investment in the reader: Your firm has taken the time and gone to the expense to send personalized content to them directly in their mailbox. Your clients know you are investing real money on them when you send them a newsletter in the mail. According to marketing guru Dan Kennedy, “This engages reciprocity.”
4) Print Newsletters have a longer shelf life and a larger audience: Not only are they less likely to be trashed or “deleted”, but print newsletters are actually more likely to be read and then shared with friends or family, days or even weeks later. It is not unusual for someone to save a stack of written publications to read at another time when it is convenient. It is highly unlikely they will sit down on their comfy couch to sift through stacks of emails…
And there’s also a real chance that when they’re done reading your newsletter, they may hand it to a friend or family member.
5) Print Newsletters can contain more content: With print newsletters, you have more opportunity to entertain, educate and connect with your reader than with emails, which are typically shorter, with significantly less content. Simply stated, educational marketing works. The more or better the education, and “content”, the greater the chance your marketing efforts will yield results. There’s also a greater chance of having articles or information that your reader may be prompted to share with his or her family and friends.
There is no way around the email newsletter’s one big advantage: it is definitely cheaper to put together and disseminate than a printed newsletter. But based on the foregoing analysis, it is definitely NOT your best bet in terms of actually reaching your desired audience.
If you are already sending out email newsletters, you should check to see how many of these emails are getting opened by the recipients, and if you haven’t yet started sending direct mail print newsletters, now is the time to start! Creating loyal and referral source clients may be only a few stamps away!
