Published on August 25, 2012 When is it best to send out a newsletter?
An email newsletter is designed to keep customers on top of the products and services in your store, and your brand. It builds likability of store brand as somewhere that they remember and prefer to purchase from, it builds interest in your products by keeping your store top of mind.
The big risk that you run is that your newsletter is seen as spam and is not useful or interesting for your store’s customers.
As a general rule of thumb, a weekly newsletter is good for a store with new products on a regular basis – it keeps your store top of mind for your customers but doesn’t swamp them with information.
If you don’t have frequent new products or interesting news, you should have at least a monthly newsletter for your store. Create an editorial schedule with the main topic you will cover in your store each month and start researching it early. Work to a 3 or 4 week schedule:
- Week 1: Research the topics that you are writing about, do interviews if required etc.
- Week 2: Write the issue – cover the topics or trends that will make your customers desire those products or understand those trends. Make the newsletter interesting. Nobody wants to just read a dump of your products and descriptions – they can see that on your site.
- Week 3: Editing getting ready to send.
- Week 4: Send and prepare for the next issue.
Another good rule of thumb about your newsletter content: if your newsletter is not useful, it’s a waste of time.
The exception to this rule of thumb is a daily deal kind of newsletter, where customers will expect the newsletter early in the day every day. Aim to get it in their inboxes before 8am each day – as they can read it when they get to their work and are reading their emails/having their morning coffee.
The rule of thumb may not work for every industry so consider asking your customers how often they want to receive news from you – in the form of a survey, or a contest for giving feedback.
If you don’t want to ask customers how often they want to receive newsletters, try testing different frequencies and running a similar offer over a set period of time. Test the take-up of the similar offer for the two different test frequencies and decide which was the most effective for you.
Test, try and monitor your newsletter frequency to find the best option for you.
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