On the Importance of Newsletter Frequency
One question that I often hear from clients is how often they should send out their newsletter. Is quarterly often enough to keep clients in the loop? Is monthly too often?
No, monthly is not too often. In fact, you should send out your newsletter at least once a month. Your clients are hit with marketing from countless brands and businesses daily, and six weeks from now they could have forgotten about you amongst the barrage.
Here are the four main reasons I believe monthly distribution, or even more often, is crucial for the success of your newsletter.
You Want it to Be Read
Your newsletter should be timely and succinct — your readers will appreciate relevant information in amounts small enough for them to digest. By sending out your newsletter once a month, you can focus on news items that have happened within the past month, and keep it short. A quarterly newsletter, by contrast, runs the risk of cramming in so much information that the reader will simply overlook much of it. Importantly, the information is also current rather than a couple of months old. Deliver news to your clients while it is still news.
The Health of Your List
Allowing three months to pass between newsletters, as with a quarterly newsletter, increases the chances of list drop-off. Three months is enough time for readers to either lose interest or switch email address, something that 30% of subscribers do once a year.
And it’s not just your existing subscribers that you risk by spacing out your newsletter send-outs by too much — it’s also your potential sign-ups. Each time you send out a newsletter, you create an opportunity for subscribers to share or forward it to colleagues, and create the chance of new subscribers. By sending it out less often you only cut down on these opportunities.
Social Media
Your newsletter is just one more source of content, whether you use that content for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or your blog. It’s also a great place to promote and link back to your blog, and possibly your other social media accounts as appropriate.
Building a Relationship with Your Client
Your relationship with your client relies on regular content and managing expectations. Very simply put, a monthly newsletter puts you in touch with your client twelve times each year, rather than four as with a quarterly newsletter. It also creates the expectation of receiving your newsletter each month, increasing the chances that reading it will become a habit. Creating that expectation with a quarterly newsletter is much more difficult.
Have you had success with the frequency of your newsletter? How often do you send it and why do you think this has been successful for you?
If you need help creating your newsletter, building your list, or managing regular distribution of your newsletter, give us a call! We do that.
P.S. Tenato is currently reworking our newsletter, which is why we haven’t published one recently. However, please do subscribe and you can be one of the first to see our relaunch!)
