Skimm This: Why Email Newsletters are Still Important to Your Business

Before the rise of social media, there were newsletters. If you wanted to inform your customers about the deals of the week or recent news items, chances are you created an email blast to send out. It was fun to design and gather information for the newsletter. And admit it, whenever a person used a deal from the email, you felt a twinge of joy that someone out there is reading your newsletters.

But then, social media hit. And nowadays, if you want to promote a deal, all you have to do is go to your Facebook page and post about it. And you probably forgot all about your email newsletter.

Or did you? Do you still send out a newsletter every week but getting a smaller and smaller return? Are you questioning the newsletter’s effectiveness? Is the email newsletter truly a dead thing?

Well, not necessarily. According to this New York Times article published a couple of years ago, email newsletters are still killing it. For instance, take a look at the cheeky newsletter The Skimm. Launched in 2014, the daily newsletter, which presents top news items of the day written in a very casual, breezy manner, has 3.5 million subscribers and recently launched a news subscription app Skimm Ahead.

To be fair, a newsletter presenting news in an entertaining, easy-to-understand manner is much different than a marketing email blast. And you probably don’t have the massive numbers that The Skimm does. In fact, you don’t even know if anyone is paying attention to your newsletters! Why waste the time when you can put out the same information on social media?

Before you do away with your newsletter, here are some reasons why you want to keep it around. For instance, an email newsletter is a direct line of communication to your customers. Unlike social media where you are just spreading your message to the masses with the hope that someone will see it on their news feed, you know the people who you want to see your message will definitely see it. It’s also a great way to keep your business in front of your customer so they don’t forget about you.

But there is something you can learn from The Skimm and its ilk. Entertainment goes a long way. You want to keep your email newsletter short, entertaining, and well designed. And remember, when writing content for your emails, you don’t have to be so serious. Be casual – these are your friends, after all, so talk to them that way.

(38)