The “newsletter” is supposed to be a great way of keeping in touch with clients. In theory, regular mailing from your company sent to your clients keeps you in their minds and helps them think of you when they need a new policy.
In the past the cost of producing these letters/mails has been such that they usually go to the most valuable clients, or they get produced on a long cycle (say every three to six months, or even annually). But the internet, and specifically email, has turned that upside down. For about a tenth of the cost of a mailing to your select clients you can hit every client who has an email address.
This is wonderful! Isn't it?
It's not for the client. As everyone wants to be a “partner” rather than a supplier more and more companies are producing newsletters. The result is an inbox swamped with mail from every website the client has ever visited and forgotten to check the “please do not send me mail” box!
Yet email based newsletters can be incredibly powerful. They are cost effective to produce and distribute, and results can often be measured directly. What's more, because they are so easy for the recipient to reproduce, a good newsletter can find itself in the hands of people you would never expect it to reach directly.
There is another dimension that most companies have yet to exploit.
Imagine your company has three types of clients: personal lines, commercial lines and life. In order to get the economies of scale that come with traditional printing methods you'd have to produce a newsletter that caters for all three different types of client. The result is two-thirds of content doesn't have any relevance to the person who gets it. That's wasted money, and it reduces the chance of it getting read at all.
With email you can cut out the waste and deliver a shorter, but more focused newsletter that is more likely to be read.
More importantly it is likely to be viewed as a valuable source of relevant information. With it your business becomes associated in the client's mind with good quality information, adding to the relationship you are building with them.
Email newsletters can be a powerful tactic for your marketing strategy. But with so many companies producing them you are going to have to work extra hard to get yours noticed.
