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| Electronic Newsletters Work |
Electronic Newsletters Grow IAQ & Environmental Businesses
Why should your indoor air quality or environmental business utilize electronic newsletters?
Here are the answers:
1. They work
2. Fast & easy to produce
3. Inexpensive
I began using electronic newsletters in 1998 at what was then Aerotech Laboratories. The laboratory was perhaps one of the first companies in the industry to take advantage of this marketing resource even before many clients had an email address at work.
Here is a brief case study on how and why the company decided to begin using e-newsletters over a decade ago.
When Aerotech Laboratories began their big push in the late 1990s to become a major player in the IAQ laboratory testing field they were a relatively unknown company outside of Arizona. The company was small, with less than 10 employees and few IAQ customers outside of the greater Phoenix area.
Tasked with turning the laboratory into one of the primary IAQ laboratories the company decided that with a limited marketing budget one of the best ways to get noticed was to begin an email newsletter program called IAQ Tech Tips.
The e-newsletter had humble beginnings with the first issue being sent out to less than 1000 people, primarily potential customers. The recipients were IAQ, industrial hygiene and environmental professionals from around the United States and beyond. The first issue was brief text message about Stachybotrys and what type of media to use for viable air sampling.
The company immediately started getting positive feedback from people who received the email message which encouraged the program to continue and grow. By the time the company was sold in 2004, and eventually became part of the EMLab P&K family of testing laboratories, the newsletter distribution had grown to tens of thousands of contacts. By then it was produced in HTML format and was an important factor in helping grow the company to several hundred employees.
So why were e-newsletters such a key marketing component at Aerotech? Quite simply it allowed the company to be seen and heard from future clients on a regular basis and the program cost the company very little to run. An idea for a topic to be broadcast could be thought of on the way to work and by later that day would be in perhaps 50,000 email boxes. To do the same with a print newsletter, which the company did do on a quarterly basis, took weeks of writing and thousands of dollars in design, print and mailing costs.
#1 Excuse for why companies don't use e-newsletters.
"I get so much junk email, and I know others do as well, that my message won't be seen. So why bother with an e-newsletter?" True we all receive a lot of extra emails in our inbox, but a well crafted e-newsletter should stand out from the clutter.
The best ways to make your message noticed include the following:
- Have good content - educational marketing works perfectly for e-newsletters. Educate while you subtly advertise, don't blatantly advertise.
- Stay focused - don't try to cover too many topics in your e-newsletter. Find a couple topics and focus on those, you can always cover other topics in a future issue.
- Commit to a schedule - regularly send your e-newsletter (once per month is a good schedule). Like anything in marketing it takes repeated exposures to be noticed and to brand your company as the go to resource/experts for your field.
- Title - use a well thought out title to increase the chances of the email being opened.
- Appearance - once the e-newsletter is opened have an attractive and colorful e-newsletter appear on your customers' and future customers' screens.
- Links - include links in the e-newsletter for more information and other relevant opportunities for the viewer to learn more or to contact your company.
Cochrane & Associates, LLC, the environmental, mold and indoor air quality industries' only dedicated marketing, public relations and business development consulting firm works with clients to develop ways to maximize their marketing efforts. We hope you consider electronic newsletters as a part of your marketing strategy. We also invite you to visit our newest venture, the IAQ Video Network www.IAQTV.com and submit any videos you may have for inclusion on the website.
