Change and your e-newsletter

As David Bowie might say, "Everything ch-ch-ch-changes." At the beginning of a newsletter's life, there is a good match between the emails and the recipients. You send what you wanted to send (and promised to send.) They get what they wanted to get (and asked for by signing up.)

Then change rears its ugly head over the email parapet.

Readers change interests or enter different lifestages. Broader email user habits also change, a point made recently by Tom O'Leary, who suggests how you might adapt your email newsletter to cope.

Equally, your newsletter changes as it moves away from the original scope that first attracted those readers.

This change may be inadvertent. Meryl K. Evans writes extensively about how newsletters can become victims of their own success.

Pride and conceit can turn informational emails into (self-)promotional vehicles, contrary to what the readership expects and wants.

The change may be forced upon you. Deadlines interfere with your ability to plan content thoughtfully and thoroughly. Sales targets and impatient bosses force compromises on such things as the balance between promotional and informational content.

This change may also be deliberate. You adjust your newsletter approach to account for wider changes in business or marketing strategy. Or in response to the insight you gain from your email reports and customer analytics.

In the latter case, this change brings you closer to the reader. But there's a danger here. Justin Premick points out in an excellent post on planning that you need, for example, to return to your sign-up copy and ensure it reflects what you now send, rather than what you used to send when that copy was written.

(Indeed, the sign-up process is critical to ensuring the correct reader-newsletter match up in the first place. Simms Jenkins writes about this process in his latest iMediaConnection article.)

So we have a state of flux. Your newsletter is changing and the nature of your audience is changing. The point is to always be aware of this flux so you can act accordingly. So you can be proactive in ensuring the interests of both your business and the people getting your emails continue to be served.

More on e-newsletters | Tags: email marketing, email newsletters

 feed | email | Follow me on Twitter

The main website for everything email marketing | Introduction
Email advertising basics | Service listings | Sources of statistics
Advice on email design, delivery issues and list building

22 sources of inspiration
Outlook 2007 and HTML design
42 HTML email design resources

follow me on Twitter