|
Friday, February 27, 2009
Great article on MSNBC.com yesterday (Thursday) about how, in the current economy, companies are rediscovering the benefits of the email newsletter. Here's the sub-heading:
"They're not the newest fad, but these daily digests sent via e-mail can generate some much needed ad revenue when there's not much of it to go around."
You betcha! And, by the way, why does it work? Keep reading the article and below the fold they get to the crux: Engagement. Here's another great paragraph, my emphasis added:
"It may sound odd that space on a low-tech newsletter could be so desirable in an age of mass-market blogs, when young people increasingly rely on instant messaging, texts, and such sites as Twitter and Facebook instead of e-mail. But remember that signing up for and opening an e-mail newsletter is a much bigger commitment than passively clicking on a link that takes you to a blog post. Publishers can see how many people open an e-mail, how long they read it, and how many friends they forward it to. Advertisers eat up that kind of engagement, because it's different, tangible, and more likely to result in an action such as making a purchase."
Now, what's the easiest way to automatically generate a fully branded, customizable daily email newsletter from your site? FeedBlitz of course!
Read the full article here. HT: Tom Evslin for the link.
Labels: email marketing, email newsletters
|
|
posted at 5:32 PM
3 Comments:
The argument is a bit specious. Clicking through to a blog post is active not passive. Opening email is active too. However, when you are drowning in newsletters (like me!) you need to get scroogy with the clicks and generous with the archive button. Nothing other than the most compelling headlines will get me to click through on the blog link or the email. Exceptions are my personal authority list.
That said, email newsletters nevertheless have an important place in the scheme of things.
Am currently window shopping and Feedblitz looks attractive (pricing vs features). Everything seems to be covered except A/B testing. Did I miss it or if it's missing now any plans to add?
The author is arguing that *signing up* for a newsletter is more of a commitment than a single click on the WWW and I think it's tought to disagree w/that. Once you're on a list then the act of reading it requires about the same effort, true, but an email marketer knows nore about you by then and is pushing content to you rather than waiting for you to stop by the site again.
You can achieve A/B testing in FeedBlitz via custom field segmentation. If you've any specific features you'd like to see (or a different way to do it) then you're more than welcome to mail me at phil @ feedblitz.com
...or follow me on twitter @phollows
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
<< Home