One of the biggest difficulties of email list building is getting people to sign up. Possibly the second biggest difficulty is persuading them to stay signed up one they start receiving messages from your company. Newsletters can be a big help with both problems.

The Difficulties

If you don’t offer anything for people who opt in, then generally the numbers aren’t that high. They don’t want to give you their details for nothing. The trouble is, many of the things you could offer them, like e-books in your area, free gifts, or even access to forums, take time and effort to produce or manage.

Worse, when they have signed up and start to receive product information from your company, the customers start to realise that this is simply an attempt to sell to them. They forget what they got out of it, and can occasionally feel that they are being exploited. At best, they don’t read the emails. At worst, they unsubscribe or accuse you of spamming them.

Newsletters

Newsletters can help with all these aspects of your email list building. They are cheap to produce, and take no more effort than your existing product messages would have done. At the same time, because they include things other than the products, like comments on your industry, news, jokes or other material, the customer still feels that they are getting something from letting you contact them. They don’t have to be complicated. Even just a couple of short pieces of news mixed in with the details of your products and services can make the messages more interesting to read, and thus more effective in communicating with your customers.