Client Newsletters: Do They Belong in Your B2B Marketing Mix?
Email marketing is one of those things many marketers feel like they “should” do, but the fact remains that B2B email marketing strategies differ for each organization. For some, simply sending out emails with current promotions can lead to great click-through rates (anything over 3.5%) and a decent ROI. However, for certain B2B industries, a little more curation is needed, hence why the client newsletter continues to be a mainstay strategy for email marketing.
A client newsletter is just what it sounds like: a curated newsletter, often centered on specific themes or topics. They can be used in a variety of different ways (some of which we’ll go into below), but the main purpose should be to inform your clients.
Because the average working professional gets about 122 business emails per day according to Radicati, your email messaging must be on point. Below are some strategies for creating client email newsletters, including when each approach can work best in a specific industry:
Share Your Own Content
If your B2B organization has done a good job with your content strategy and creation, sharing your latest articles or pieces of content is a great fit for a client newsletter. This is usually best if you’re in an industry that needs some education, either on how to use your products or strategy for properly optimizing them.
For instance, a gift card creation and management system could create content about seasonality, the psychology behind specific designs, or new card technology. These types of news updates and strategy behind implementing the product make the content a perfect fit for a newsletter because it’s beneficial to the audience.
The cardinal rule of newsletters (whether it’s your own content or someone else’s) is that you always want it to be beneficial in some way. Content that just talks about your own organization (with no benefit to the audience members for taking the time to read it), won’t be successful at engaging your audience.
Be an Industry Resource
If you don’t write your own content (or it’s not up for the spotlight of being featured in a regular client email blast), you can still share content through a curated newsletter. Use a content discovery tool like BuzzSumo or search for specific terms on LinkedIn, Google, and your favorite industry blogs to curate a great list of content for your audience to enjoy. Make the client newsletter personal by writing 1-2 unique sentences about the content piece and why it’s interesting or important. This allows you to give your own company spin on what is being shared.
Whether the content is written by your organization or not, putting a personalized spin on it is what sets you up to be a resource in your industry. By providing a well thought out newsletter that is actually beneficial to read will make your audience excited to check out what you have to say.
To build up this momentum, be sure to send the newsletter the same day every week or month and experiment with layout, content, subject line, and send times to figure out what gets the most opens and clicks. Over time, your brand will grow in the mind of the audience as a reliable resource in the industry, potentially helping you grow your leads and customer inquiries.
Share Events or New Products
Client newsletters can include company events or new products, but the messaging needs to be well thought out. If you just want to share that you’ll be at a specific trade show or you’re hosting a community happy hour, these updates would be best in the sidebar of the newsletter.
If you want to introduce new products, make sure to write the copy about the product with the customers’ mindset:
- Why should they care?
- How does this benefit them?
- Do they get a special offer to buying or asking about it now?
- What purpose does this serve?
Think of value first and it will help keep the customer’s interest. By explaining why this product was created to fill a need, and how using or buying the product will benefit readers, it can help ensure your newsletter stays a valued resource for those on your email list.
Final Thoughts
Be careful when sharing self-promotional updates in the newsletter format. This may start to blur the line into “regular email marketing” territory, which is used with the aim of solely driving sales. Dedicate your client newsletter to education and becoming a well-known resource in your industry, and your customers will appreciate the change of pace in content topic and layout. Experiment with what content works best and continue to tweak until you find your newsletter nirvana!
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