E-newsletters "long-term, multiyear investment" according to Nielsen
According to Nielsen Norman Group’s recently released e-newsletter usability study, 82% of respondents still don’t understand the acronym “RSS” (which stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’) and that despite overflowing email inboxes and declining open rates, email newsletters still outperform RSS.
(Indeed, I am somewhat amused that I have added an email subscription form to this blog since RSS is supposed to be the way around clogged inboxes.)
I once talked to Jessica Albon about why people react so emotionally to e-newsletters. Said Jessica at the time, “E-newsletters arrive in your in-box. They interrupt your work and force you to deal with them — either you read the newsletter, file it away for later, or delete it.”
She’s right. Sometimes I grind my teeth due to e-newsletters — often they arrive unbidden in my inbox, forcing me to take the time to unsubscribe. Other times, I get a newsletter from one of my favorite people, such as Betsy Harper, and I stop everything I’m doing to read it.
Done right, an e-newsletter is a true marketing investment that pays signifcant dividends no matter what size your company. As the Nielsen Norman Group study shows, newsletters impart high-value information and they influence purchasing decisions.
The reason companies should consider them “long-term multiyear investments” is because people archive their old newsletters — making the information valuable months and years after it has been written.
In a BtoB Online article Nielsen suggested “e-mail marketers should not only be optimizing their Web sites for search but should also think in terms of keywords when creating e-mail newsletters.
“You want to be sure when people search for a topic you are covering in an e-mail, that it pops up in that particular search. You want to use the same terminology that your target audience is using. Newsletters need to be thought of as a long-term, multiyear investment. Desktop search is a way to have that longer-term relationship.
Want to know the future of e-newsletters? Read The London Times Online article, Google to Focus on London for Next Phase of Growth. Is your newsletter ready to go mobile?
