Our Newsletter Debate
We had a brief debate last week on the value of printed newsletters. We've done them forever and in fact also do "scaled down" (best of) electronic versions as well.
Being the stubborn minded person I am, my "inner-geek" was arguing for the demise of our printed Newsletter.
This morning, over a cup of coffee I decided to list the reasons why printed newsletters should die out.
Here they are:
1. Printed Newsletters are not "green". Even when printed on recycled paper, they still require lots of energy to print and distribute and end up having to be recycled by the recipient or worse yet, end up in a landfill.
2. Printed Newsletters have no direct and easy opt-out feature. Most don't contain any information on how to stop them from being sent and if they do, most customers find it easier to simply throw it out every time it comes.
3. With a printed newsletter, it is impossible to tell if your message is being read. If you can't measure the effectiveness of the campaign, why are you continuing it?
4. Printed media does not easily support a dialogue. With an electronic version, you can contain an email reply link. Best you can do with a printed version is supply a phone number or an email address. But if the person reading your message in print form isn't close to a computer at the time, you might lose out on that idea because of immediacy. Electronic versions have the advantage of being read on a computer where a reply is only a click away. (Advocates of the printed form would argue that being able to read it away from a computer is an advantage.)
5. Production cost is much higher with printed media. At our work we take a day or two to generate mailing lists, then coordinate getting the Newsletter printed, addressed and mailed. The entire effort involves three or four internal people, plus two outside vendors. The timeline is measured in days. With email newsletters, your list is already available. Your aren't restricted to a specific number of Newsletters (budget constraints) and once the content is generated, you're good to go. Time, from conception to delivery is measured in hours, not days.
6. Cost of list cleaning is far higher with printed newsletters. You have to pay for return receipt, then manually update your database. The electronic counterpart is a bounce back email address, which can be removed/corrected quickly without the cost of returned postage.
7. Printed Newsletters contain only static content, print and images, whereas their electronic counterparts can contain audio and video as well as dynamic links to other resources and websites.
8. Electronic versions can be short articles, with links to more comprehensive stories. I argue that this offers an advantage to both the reader and the producer. The electronic format isn't limited by page size, whereas a 4 page newsletter is just that. And the electronic content can easily be re-purposed on websites, microsites, blogs and video channels.
So these are my arguments for killing off the printed newsletter. But all marketing departments should be aware that regardless of Newsletter format;
- If the content isn't compelling, educational or of interest to your reader, don't bother with EITHER format.
- And if your reader hasn't asked to receive your newsletter, you're creating spam.
