A decade ago, newsletters were considered old-school marketing. Resources, instead, were typically pushed toward social media marketing and other fresh alternatives. But all of that has changed in recent years as newsletters have made a swift and striking comeback.
With audiences burning out on short-form video ads and copious posts across channels, a fantastic newsletter really stood out. It could break through the noise by standing out in a personal or professional inbox. It was something for subscribers to discover and enjoy on their own terms, and in their own time.
Nothing made that more obvious than the rocket success of Substack. Now, it’s not just companies promoting their newsletters; someone’s mom or friend likely has one you can subscribe to, too. The old “everyone has a podcast” is now “everyone has a newsletter.”
That can mean two things:
- If you don’t have a newsletter these days, it might look like you’re falling behind with your marketing efforts.
- This is now a highly saturated field, so you really need to make sure your newsletter stands out.
You might be wondering…wait, do I need a newsletter for my company? How and where do I start? How can I make sure our investment in a new product will pay off? And we’re here to answer those questions in this two-part blog series.
What Are the Advantages of Adding a Newsletter to Your Marketing Efforts?
Newsletters offer something fundamentally valuable: direct access to your audience. For that reason alone, they can be highly advantageous.
They’re opt-in by design, which means that those who are receiving your newsletter already know you and have chosen to hear from you. Building on that can form an unparalleled level of trust and loyalty.
They’re also typically a lighter lift to create, schedule, and send than something like a digital ad. They also scale naturally. A newsletter that serves 100 subscribers today can serve 10,000 tomorrow without a proportional increase in effort or expense. And if you need to change something as your company evolves? That’s easy to do. Changing the cadence, length, or focus doesn’t require a full overhaul.
For these reasons, newsletters have become the backbone of many companies’ marketing ecosystems: supporting social media, content marketing, and sales outreach, rather than competing with them.
Which brings us to the next—and most important—question: Do you actually need one? We’ll explore this question and let you know how to get started.