Many marketing people talk about the value of an e-newsletter as a marketing tool. I talk about them as a networking and follow-up tool. But you have got to do them right to be of value. And obviously, not everyone gets it.
A few days ago, I received an e-newsletter from a contact. It was her first, and I make a point of reading a first newsletter. Then I usually know if I will continue reading them.
The first thing I noticed was that none of content was written by my contact. Aren’t newsletters supposed to brand us as thought leaders? How can that happen if we just repackage other people’s words? But maybe she isn’t a good writer, and her purpose is to aggregate useful information. Okay, I can go along with that.
But there was a further problem. What part of “useful” did she fail to get? She and I are in the same industry, and none of the articles were interesting to me. In fact, none of them were interesting. So far, not so good.
Then I got to the bottom of the page. And saw the “Subscribe” button. Nothing wrong with that. What was very wrong was the part about 12 issues for $150! The content in this newsletter wasn’t worth being free.
To finish this story, out of curiosity, I went to her website to see how I would subscribe and pay for this. Nothing. No mention of how to subscribe. No e-commerce functionality. How was I suppose to subscribe, assuming I were crazy enough to do so? Back to the newsletter. Maybe I had misunderstood. Nope, the price was still there. And so was a P.O. Box. Is she serious? She thinks I would send a check to a P.O. Box and trust that everything will get sorted out?
Did we go back to the 20th century when I wasn’t looking?
Tags: communication, e-marketing, Networking, newsletter