This article on MarketingSherpa, "How to Maximize Impact of Email Newsletter Ads - 4 Takeaways on Ad Recall, Forwards & More," is about a study conducted by the American Institute of CPAs on the effectiveness of their own email marketing.

Of the four major takeaways, two are lessons in how to use content, especially in B2B marketing. They key is to educate the reader, not push a sale.

• Substance really is more important than style. AICPA found that content that was understandable, believeable, and memorable was more likely to influence a buying decision. At the end of the day, buyers don’t want to believe they were influenced by incentives or flashy copy, but rather by solid due diligence, based on educational information.

• Sponsored content outperforms a banner ad. AICPA found that readers spend about as much time on sponsored case studies and white papers as they do on editorial content in a newsletter--and the sponsored content has the added benefit of being associated to a vendor.

This article also lists some interesting metrics about how readers use and recall the content from email newsletters--click-throughs don't tell the whole story. Overall, the believability of the information is what impacts a buying decision over the long term.

Labels: email marketing

We are launching our blogletter—an email newsletter that is built on top of our blog. What a concept!

How does it work? Instead of putting long articles in our e-newsletter, or creating new web pages for the articles, we simply post the articles to our blog. They make great blog posts. Then, we send out our e-newsletter with brief, easy-to-read introductions to the articles, and links to the full versions in the blog posts.

Not only is the blogletter handy for communicating to our clients and friends, but it's also efficient:

• Our content goes out through multiple channels, but we only have to author it and publish it once.
• The articles in the e-newsletter can act as search magnets, especially in blog searches, instead of being "trapped" in emails.
• Subscribers who prefer email to RSS will sign up to our e-newsletter list, so we only have one list of emails to manage (instead of separate subscriber lists for the blog emails and the e-newsletter).
• Articles, along with reader comments, are automatically archived in the blog.

What's more, the blogletter is also more interactive than a standard e-newsletter. Readers can leave comments on the blog, and read the comments of other readers. They can also read other blog posts, download our white papers, and check out our web site.

We didn't invent the blogletter, but we will spread the word. Here are a couple of marketing blogs that put the term "blogletter" out there first:

• How and Why I Combined My E-Newsletter With a Blog, Debbie Weil's BlogWrite for CEOs
• Where Do Your Email Newsletters Go? Email Heaven? Anything Goes Marketing

Labels: blogging, blogletter, email marketing