The problem with newsletters
(This originally appeared in my newsletter. Sign up now to get content like this, for free, every Monday.)
Most businesses have lots of "soft" leads in their database.
These are people who are kind of interested in the problem you solve, or the service you provide, but they're not really anywhere close to a buying decision.
The folks downloading lead magnets (pronounced LEED) like ROI calculators and eBooks are good examples of soft leads. They're not ready for a sales call, and they're probably not even ready to hear that much about your product.
Lots of companies communicate with these leads by sending them a regular newsletter. And that works really well if you're a small company - like mine. But if you're bigger than just a few people (or just one in my case), they inevitably fail. Here's why, and what you can do instead:
Newsletters never launch on time - ever
Over the past decade or so, I have worked with lots of businesses who use newsletters in this way. Just a little touch point, a bit of value.
And never once - not one time - have I seen one of these businesses release their newsletter on the cadence they intended.
If it's meant to be weekly, it ends up being monthly. If it's meant to be monthly, it ends up being quarterly. I've seen a quarterly one that took so long to get out the door, they just scrapped it to make way for the next quarter's newsletter. Then that one was months late as well.
This happens because of approval processes. For any organisation with more than a couple of people, it is probably not going to be a good use of the boss's time to painstakingly write a newsletter on a regular basis. But that person is absolutely going to want to see the newsletter before it goes out. Depending on the size and culture of the organisation, it might need to be seen by lots of people.
And this takes ages! People are busy, and reviewing a newsletter isn't usually a priority (more on that in a sec).
When you do this, your soft leads may as well not be in your database at all. You're communicating with them so infrequently that they're going to forget who you are.
So you're just wasting money getting the leads in the first place, and you're wasting time spinning your wheels on a late newsletter. May as well not bother.
The content usually isn't that good
The nature of newsletter-type content is that it doesn't really move the needle day to day. And approvers tend to have their heads down on stuff that does move the needle! Stuff like getting big sales across the line, hiring, firing, long term strategy, so on and so forth.
This flows down the chain. If something just generally needs to happen, but it's not really anyone's priority, it's going to be pretty lacklustre content. It's not going to get much consideration or research or anything like that. It's just going to be the easiest thing can slap together, get approved quickly and move on.
So sure, a newsletter works really well for me. The person writing, approving and sending it is all the same person - me.
And even unconstrained by an approval process, I still struggle to get newsletters out every week. Pretty much all of them are written in a mad dash on Sunday night after my family is in bed. I don't really mind, because I like writing them, but it's also not a solution I would recommend to any client.
A better way forward
Let's strip the purpose of a newsletter down to first principles. You are trying to:
Engage with contacts with useful, interesting information
Give them a pathway to take the next step in their buyer journey (if applicable).
When you look at these goals, it's clear that you don't actually have to have a newsletter at all! You just need to write good, useful emails. The content can be evergreen; something that is useful to a problem-aware subscriber will probably be just as useful today as it is a year from now.
And if the content is evergreen, you can write loads of it at once, then automate it!
One of my favourite examples is a guy named Mehdi, who owns a weight lifting tracking app called Stronglifts. If you sign up for the free version of Stronglifts, you'll get a whole bunch of emails over the next few weeks.
Basically none of these talk about the app itself - but all of them talk about weight lifting in general. Each one has an interesting fact, story, link to a video, something like that, and a PS field that gives you the option of switching to a paid version of the app. Take a look:
These are all useful and interesting if you're interested in weightlifting. And they run on an automated basis for something like 90 days once you sign up for the free app.
Set and forget
You can boil this down to a pretty straightforward process:
Figure out a list of topics
Figure out a cadence (weekly? fortnightly?)
Write some content around your topics
Set them to run at your chosen cadence to your new subscribers
CRITICAL: reassess on a regular basis. Add and remove topics as needed.
The great thing about this approach is that it can be as big or as small as you want to start. You can do a little pilot project, with just a handful of emails, which you then build out over time. Or you can start with an entire year's worth of daily emails.
Either way, once you get it up and running, it runs forever - and that's the key difference between this setup and a regular newsletter. It's one set of approvals, not a new approval every month or so. It's one chunk of content, not new content to put into your workflow over and over.
The reality is, any one newsletter isn't going to move the needle for this type of thing. It's about the whole programme. But approaching each newsletter on an ad-hoc basis means disproportionate time and energy for one tiny part of a bigger whole.
So it makes a lot more sense to do one big thing rather than a bunch of smaller things. It's more efficient, it's less pressure on your team, and it frees up everyone's time to work on bigger, more impactful projects.
Let me know if you want me to help you get one up and running.
Have a good week
Sam
PS: (The automated approach is not without risk, though. Don't completely forget about it. Although in fairness I don't think Weber deserved the outrage it got for this.)
PPS: Here's a tool I've been tinkering away at this week - a short checklist you can use to review your own home page. Take a look and give it a go. Let me know what you think!
PPS: Or, as always, you can have me review your home page for you. $799, one week turnaround, money back guarantee. You know the drill. Book yours on this page.
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