I think it’s safe to say in 2018 that we all hate newsletters.

Maybe there is some­one out there that still likes get­ting month­ly or week­ly emails in their inbox with sub­ject lines like “August newslet­ter: update of com­pa­ny events at blah blah Inc.” How­ev­er, for most of us the word “newslet­ter” has become unat­trac­tive; devoid of mean­ing and there­fore any val­ue. We don’t like the newslet­ters we receive nor do we get any­thing out of them so we resist cre­at­ing our own email mar­ket­ing cam­paigns in fear of being that mean­ing­less con­tent drib­bling into oth­ers inbox­es that we dis­like so much ourselves.

Why would we want to do that to any­one?! Well, you should, and here’s why.

Newslet­ters have his­tor­i­cal­ly been emails that hum­ble-brag about inter­nal com­pa­ny achieve­ments and give gen­er­al infor­ma­tion to the poor saps that were unfor­tu­nate enough to end up on said com­pa­ny’s RSS feed (what­ev­er that is, or rather, was). So while the old “newslet­ter” con­tent is use­less and dead, suc­cess­ful mar­keters know that qual­i­ty email mar­ket­ing is still one of the best mar­ket­ing tools avail­able, espe­cial­ly for ser­vice-based busi­ness­es. Depend­ing on which study you read, you get $35 to $40 back for every dol­lar you invest in email! This rein­forces the fact that hands down, there’s noth­ing more valu­able than direct access to someone’s attention.

Despite these num­bers, many small busi­ness own­ers still hold on to neg­a­tive feel­ings about email mar­ket­ing, and under­stand­ably so, but it is pre­vent­ing them from doing some­thing that is one of the eas­i­est and cheap­est ways to mar­ket your­self and your busi­ness. Just because you hate being on some lists, doesn’t mean lists don’t work.

Just like brand­ing, email mar­ket­ing is all about speak­ing to your ide­al clients. Whether it’s through a week­ly or month­ly email, if you can delight peo­ple by shar­ing unique insights with them on a reg­u­lar basis, email is prob­a­bly the first place you should focus your brand-build­ing energy.

So what­ev­er per­son­al hang-ups you have about being on someone’s list, or poten­tial cus­tomers being on yours, it’s time to get over them. Because, in the end, if you’re giv­ing some­one what they want, those peo­ple will read every sin­gle word you send their way and still want more. And that is one of the best ways to build long-term rela­tion­ships with future clients, expo­nen­tial­ly grow­ing your busi­ness over time.

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