“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.” – Seth Godin
Reaching out to current and potential clients, customers, and partners is critical to the long-term success of your business.
And connecting with your audience beyond selling your products or services is part of what makes a brand memorable.
One of the easiest ways to make an authentic connection at scale is to send a monthly email newsletter through your marketing automation platform.
Now, it’s highly likely your company already has or has at least experimented with a monthly newsletter to lackluster results.
Here are five reasons why your B2B newsletter strategy is failing to make a connection.
5 things you’re doing wrong with your email newsletter
- Takes a scattershot approach. Stop trying to be all things to all people. Know who your audience is and send them valuable educational content on a regular cadence. It’s a strategy, not a tactic.
- Focuses on you, not your audience. Nobody wants to hear about you. Go back to marketing basics and help your target audience answer the question what’s in it for me (WIFM)?
- Leads with a demo request or other sales-y language. The goal of your B2B company newsletter is to keep your brand top of mind. While your contacts may not need your products and services right now, showing up in their inbox is an easy way to let them know you’ll be there when they do.
- Lacks personality. A newsletter is ideal for letting your passion, humor, and values shine. People want to know they’re doing business with real people, not a faceless company just out to make money.
- Avoids the big questions. Whatever industry you’re in, you have ideas about where it is headed. Your newsletter can and should be a platform to share your thoughts on innovations, trends, and the future. Give your audience something to think about!
Tactical considerations for making your email newsletter a success
While you may have the drive to publish a monthly newsletter, you can’t ignore the tactical execution.
To make your monthly email newsletter a success, here are some of the practical considerations:
- Content, content, content. Make sure you are creating (and sending) relevant and engaging information that is meaningful to your network.
- Consistency. Create a schedule and stick to it.
- Current: Is your marketing list clean and current? Don’t suddenly start sending content to people you haven’t emailed in three years.
Pro-tip: Don’t forget about email marketing compliance, especially when it comes to tradeshows!
Enter the LinkedIn newsletter
But before you put all your eggs in the newsletter basket, consider an alternative way to engage with your audience via LinkedIn newsletters.
As of October 2023, LinkedIn reported having more than 450 million newsletter subscribers on their platform.
Your B2B audience is on LinkedIn (don’t believe me, here are 51 stats to consider). Why not meet your audience where they are?
Here are three reasons your company should consider a LinkedIn newsletter:
- You don’t need to have an individual’s email address to connect with them
- Issues are delivered to subscribers in their LinkedIn feed and via email
- Editions are searchable via Google, thus expanding your SEO footprint for key terms
Rethink your B2B newsletter strategy
The Clarity Quest monthly newsletter is part of our health tech marketing agency’s success story and we recently launched our own LinkedIn newsletter.
Whatever channel (or channels) you decide to pursue, making authentic connections with your audience should be at the center of your B2B newsletter strategy.
Note: This blog post was originally posted in May 2020, and has been updated to reflect new information.
