We explain why printed newsletters are still one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal and share some great ideas to make yours work hard for your business
You may already send out a printed newsletter to your customers, clients, or supporters, but it's not giving you the return on investment that you'd hoped for. Or you may have given up on printed newsletters in favor of email and social media contact. But while in the digital age a paper newsletter that goes out with the mail may seem a little out of date, when you look at the evidence and analyze the data, you see that printed newsletter marketing is still both powerful and effective.
So, if you've never tried it or gave it up in favor of electronic alternatives, you may miss a trick. In this post, we'll explain several good reasons you should start a printed newsletter marketing campaign. If you already send out a paper newsletter and you're disappointed with the results, in this post you will find several great hints and fixes to help you get a good return from now on.
Follow the evidence
Direct mailing remains one of the most successful and robust forms of business promotion and product or service marketing. And among the several materials which work best in a direct mailing campaign, the newsletter stands out head and shoulders above most others bar, perhaps, the printed product catalog. But don't take our word for it. Dig into the data and evaluate the evidence. According to several recent studies and surveys, 80% of consumers read mailed newsletters. Another analysis showed that most consumers prefer printed marketing materials to their digital cousins, that they are more likely to interact with them, return to them, and remember the core content and marketing messages that newsletters communicate.
What makes a newsletter different from other marketing materials?
You may wonder what's so special about newsletters. The value of catalogs, promotional flyers, and informational booklets may seem clearer. But newsletters have a very special potency as people who receive them are already “warm leads” because they have subscribed. Not only that, but a newsletter can further encourage engagement with your brand and build trust through informational articles, company profiles, product reviews, hot topics, special offers, and even humor.
While the average marketing email needs to be kept short, typically under 200 words, your company newsletter can range from a single sheet to something more resembling a glossy magazine. A good newsletter, well-designed and rich in thoughtful, well-written content, becomes something consumers and potential customers look forward to and enjoy. An expertly designed, beautifully printed mail out newsletter establishes an emotional connection with your repeat buying customers, attracts fresh interest in your brand, builds authority in your industry or niche, and positions your representatives as experts and thought leaders.
Why printed newsletters have more impact than email equivalents
Nostalgia
In our increasingly information-soaked high speed Internet age, many consumers, even those in several of the younger age categories, look back with nostalgia to a slower, more laid-back, easy-going pace of life; even if their ideas of such an era are only from movies, books, or their own imagination. There's something about the physicality, the feel and texture of a printed newsletter that has cross-generational appeal. That it isn't instantly accessible at the click of a mouse raises anticipation and that heightened sense of curiosity and expectation improves the chances of it being opened, read, kept, and shared. In a fast, Internet driven world, a printed newsletter stands out and attracts attention in a way that yet another email or social media post never can.
More time for better content
Time deficit is one of the great disadvantages of the digital age and the online experience. Most people have a cluttered inbox in which several hundred unopened emails clamor for their attention. Email providers, and even social media algorithms, increasingly execute ever more accurate options for filtering, auto-deleting, and otherwise dismissing these communications; especially marketing and promotional material, which is likely to be flagged as spam, and end up heading straight to the trash folder. Even if your email newsletter gets opened — and most don't — you have a matter of seconds to capture the attention of your reader, hold it, and get your message across. And we all know by now that information we absorb online is less likely to be kept than information we absorb through printed media.
But with a mailed out printed newsletter, you have time and space to engage, entertain, inform, educate, and persuade a willing and open-minded reader. While the most powerful responses always come from voluntary subscribers, a high percentage of even unsolicited newsletters sent through the mail get opened. The open rates for even the most effective email newsletter campaigns are dismal by comparison. So, with a printed newsletter you have a much better chance of your content being seen. Make that content interesting and useful, and they will read it. Many consumers look forward to receiving their mailed-out newsletter and may make special time in the day to settle down and read it with special attention.
Even if your recipient has not requested the newsletter and even if they have no interest in opening it, you'll still get more exposure from your branded envelope that sits on the kitchen surface, the hall table, or the desk for a few minutes before it makes its final journey to the trash can then your auto deleted emails never would.
Optimises multichannel marketing
When we invented the elevator, we didn't destroy the stairs; and when the movies came along, they didn't put novelists out of business. But there's a weird idea in several commercial sectors that when a new technology comes on board, you must ditch the old one. Well, that may sometimes be true, but digital marketing will never replace off-line marketing entirely. Most studies show beyond doubt that the most effective marketing campaigns are multichannel campaigns, which include a range of digital and printed materials.
There's a huge market sector that remains suspicious of digital media. The only way to reach out to that demographic is through more traditional means. But you can also use off-line printed marketing media — such as a newsletter — to feedback traffic and custom to your online properties. Your printed newsletter can include QR and AR codes, which readers can scan to get further information on a topic from your blog, check out the technical specifications of a product on your website, or access videos, special offers, and subscription discounts.
The printed newsletter, while under-used by many businesses, is still the mainstay of the powerful outreach campaigns run by charities and nonprofits. They understand the depth of emotional engagement they can achieve through printed media, which would not be possible through digital media alone. These organizations are not Luddite anti-digital dinosaurs of a bygone age. They're extremely successful in capturing public attention, communicating essential messages, and maintaining engagement over lifetimes. There's no doubt that their commitment to multichannel marketing in which the digital and printed campaigns fully integrate and cross communicate are the key to this aspect of their success. Any smart business would do well to take a leaf out of their book.
Top tips to make a successful printed newsletter
We hope that even if you're not yet wholly convinced, you are at least interested in the possibilities that a printed media newsletter campaign could open up for your wider marketing and promotion business strategies. So, now let's dive into our top tips for making sure that your printed newsletter does its job. And we didn't pull these ideas out of a hat. They come from over 25 years' experience in the printing industry and working with enterprise clients and nonprofits all over the world.
Content is king
Any newsletter, whether printed or digital, is only as good as the content it contains. So, it's no good just “throwing something together”. While you can devise your content plan together with your marketing team, unless you have experienced content writers in-house, outsource content creation to a reputable agency or competent freelance copywriter. And even a single page newsletter must be thoughtfully and creatively designed by knowledgeable and skilled professional. In short, your newsletter is an ambassador for your brand, a salesperson, and a marketing agent, all rolled into one. It requires an investment of time, money, talent. But done well it should bring you a positive return on your investment.
Quality is queen
If content is king — and it is — then quality is definitely queen. We've already mentioned our advice to engage the services of a professional designer and writer to create your content and develop an attractive, eye-catching, easy-to-read layout, color scheme, graphic elements, and so on. But it's equally important to print your newsletter professionally. We've heard of companies trying to cut costs by printing their newsletters on their office machines! Aside from the poor quality, it's incredibly expensive to print that way if you need to mail out more than a few dozen copies. In most cases, you will aim for a multi-page, content rich, highly visual, professional publication with a glossy cover and some form of binding. And if you have more than a hundred subscribers on your newsletter mailing list, then you should consider offset printing as it produces the highest quality results at the lowest price per copy.
Data driven styling and A/B testing
But none of this — content, design, printing and binding options — should be left to chance or executed based on guesswork. Your market research people have a role to play in the development of your newsletter. You should already have some demographic data about your customers and any new cohorts you hope to engage with your services and products. Using that as a starting point, develop a short run of trial newsletters, each with a different approach to the content, the styling, and format. Then get these out to “beta readers” along with a feedback form or telephone interview follow-up to find out what they liked and didn't. Run this test on several designs and perhaps across several demographic segments including your core consumer base. Armed with the data you gather through this process, you should be able to refine your newsletter design and content creation plan to make it appealing and effective.
But don't stop there. The next step — and you can return to this process as many times as you need during the life of your newsletter — is to run A/B testing. So, you produce two versions of your newsletter with say, an original call to action (CTA) in each. You then measure which call to action produces the highest response rate. That's just a simple example. You can test each and any element of your newsletter using this method, including headlines, logos, color schemes, content, and more.
Whichever approach you choose, and whichever elements you test, it makes sense to base your decisions on hard data gathered from evidence. You may not get everything right the first time. Who does? But with informed planning and careful analysis, you can make sure that your newsletter is as effective as possible and delivers the highest potential return on investment.
Be clear, concise, and consistent
All this talk of varying content styles, swapping out designs, changing color schemes and calls to action, market research and A/B testing may give you the false impression that the result will be complex and cluttered. But the opposite is true. The best, most cost-effective, and attention holding newsletters are always simple. The idea isn't to use all elements together but to select those design components and content types which work well and focus on them to the exclusion of others. Once you have a design and style that works, stick to it. Your newsletter, both in form and content, should always be clear, concise, and consistent.
Let's talk!
At QinPrinting we have over 25 years' experience in the commercial printing industry and work every day with our repeat buying enterprise clients and new customers to produce the finest quality printed marketing materials at an unbeatable price point. We are also genuinely committed to personalized customer care. Along with our expertise and efficient production protocols, it's that which sets us apart and sustains a worldwide reputation for excellence. When you're ready to create your newsletter — whether a leaflet-style, single page mail out or multi-page glossy magazine, or something in between — talk to us. We'd be delighted to help you print a beautiful, effective, and professional newsletter which works hard to build your brand, promote your products and services, and increase consumer engagement.