Semify is offering a new custom-tailored email newsletter service for Semify resellers! In this Video Tutorial, Semify CEO, Chad Hill, and President, Adam Stetzer talk about our new email newsletter marketing service. Newsletter services are a great, inexpensive way to keep in touch with your clients. Semify writes white label email newsletters for our resellers for free and now, for a small price, we can write your monthly newsletter customized just for you and your clientele!
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hello, Adam. What are we talking about today?
Well, today we're diving deep into email newsletter services.
I want to know, Chad, your thoughts on this. Is there any such thing as a killer email newsletter service you can just go outsource to? Because my impression is when you outsource, quality tends to suffer a bit because it's not your team doing the work. So I want to hear these discussion points on how do you select the right email newsletter service.
Good question. Yeah, and I think that there isn't a magic bullet here. And there are silver bullets, like anything, in online marketing. It's all about setting your objective and a budget, of course, and then really sticking to a plan and getting things done.
So when I look for the killer email newsletter service, one of the things that I'm looking for is some sort of proven methodology, or at least a well-defined methodology that's going to accomplish my marketing email newsletters goal, which is to send out a monthly email newsletter service. And whether that's one or that's three, you want a email services process that I can follow in marketing your email newsletter, month in and month out, that gets that done. So a couple things along those lines.
The other part of that is that with that methodology, I want to streamline the number of people that have to touch it. So if I have someone defining what I want to write about in one part of the company, and then I outsource writing the actual content, and then another person's going to handle sending the email service-- the likelihood of that actually getting done, and coordinated, and actually happening every month is very low. So I would want there to be more ownership of the entire newsletter service process, soup to nuts.
So I think one of things that we've done, in defining our email newsletter service, is that we have a research team that starts by defining what things we're going to write about in the monthly newsletter. That gets handed off to our writing team. They work together very closely-- our research department and our writing department. The writing department writes the content. That is then reviewed, but while it's being reviewed, one of our analysts is basically making sure that the review process gets done. And it's reviewed by the client.
And then when the sign-off comes in, one of our analysts-- again, who's cross-trained and understands the email services, and sits a few desks away from the writer or the researcher-- they're able to take that content, plug it into a newsletter, and send it out, and then measure the response. And then all of that feedback-- you go back in the next month in terms of, hey, the stories we wrote about didn't get a great click-through, or the title that we had or the subject line wasn't great. Let's switch that around a little bit this month. And that is what I think creates a killer email newsletter service.
Cool, so I hear you saying there's the research phase, there's the writing, which is very important, and then you're talking about this analyst role, which is the quarterback that's going to coordinate all that. Also, there's a fair amount of logistics into making sure the content looks good, images are picked, all that's put into the software, and it goes out, and the end result is a good email newsletter service.
One last question on this topic of email newsletter services-- do you think people have the right goals in mind? Or do you think there's still a mindset that I can blast out this big email newsletter or buy a list and get lots of business? Because my view on that-- and I've written about this on Search Engine Watch a couple times-- is that those days are pretty much over.
Right. Everyone's inboxes are fairly saturated. We get hundreds of emails a day. So the ones we open are the ones that we really want to read. So, the answer-- I agree with you. Buying some list with 20,000 names and sending it out is a pretty good way of one, immediately getting banned by whatever email marketing platform you're using. And then second, you're probably going to put a lot of effort in and not get a lot of bang back.
The audiences that I think are most relevant for most businesses are-- in terms of where they send their newsletters, and even having distinct content for each of these different audiences-- the first one are prospects. Have them in auto-responder, but also including your prospects in a newsletter service. Because some businesses-- it takes many months for people to make a decision.
The second audience are your current and your previous customers. So even if you're in a business that doesn't have a lot of repurchasing-- so you're a fencing guy. You put up a fence once. You don't repurchase a fence over and over again like you would if you were buying a food product or something like that.
But those guys-- it's a reminder that, oh yeah, the name of my fence company was this. And so if one of their friends says, who put your fence up, they're going to immediately be able to recommend you. So getting that impression in the inbox is very important.
And then the third group that I think a lot of people forget about, is to keep in touch with the people who refer you business. So actually having a newsletter go out to your referral network, just to keep them up to date on what email marketing services you're adding and what new things are happening in your business, is going to, again, remind them, oh yeah, next time someone asks me for this email service or that newsletter service, then I can actually recommend this. Because I'm up to speed on what's going on in that business and I'm comfortable making that referral. So that's how I would look at who to send the newsletter to and what sort of results to expect from each of those different groups.
And these things you're talking about are really email newsletter service strategy. Which, if you don't have clear when you go to try to pick a service-- we all know how this works. With a bad strategy or no strategy, you're probably going to be unhappy with the results. As far as Semify's practice, will our analysts help advise on those things, or our account manager, or is that something we expect our clients to already understand?
Well, I think that the account manager is always going to be your quarterback here at Semify, and so, where possible, they can help you with some of your thinking. But ultimately, you have to understand your customer base. And once you define who the audience is, we can help get the best results possible in terms of crafting the content to that audience, and then optimizing and getting the best click-through rate when those people get the email.
But, like a lot of things, as an outsourcing firm, we're not marketing your email newsletter for you. And a lot of that is being done either by you, or you may have a marketing consultant. We're the company that's going to take the objective, the tactic, and make sure it happens reliably every month.
Awesome. And that's the bottom line on how to pick a killer email newsletter service.
Thanks.
See ya.