Sometimes teaching an old dog new tricks is not necessary. Industry experts, including our Mopdog content strategists, have seen great marketing results by relying on well-targeted email campaigns–one of the oldest tricks in the book. Studies show email newsletters are often the best way to reach a company’s exact audience. According to the piece “Is Email Marketing Successful Or Just Plain Easy?” by Graham Jones for Business 2 Community. “There is plenty of research which shows that email marketing generates more sales and more leads than other forms of Internet marketing.”

Compared to developing a mobile app, redesigning a website or engaging across all social media platforms, email campaigns are seen as the least complex marketing tool to handle. It is also the least time intensive—if a marketing firm develops a dynamic template, various fields and images can be customized at any time. This template should be branded with your company logo, colors and slogans.

Email newsletters are designed much like an online html page, which means your message can have the same bells and whistles—embedded video, product shots and multiple hyperlinks or buttons to keep the reader’s attention. Yes, the Internet is swarming with dozens of social media options to voice an opinion, post an animal picture, share a recipe or brag about a high-tech purchase. However, in the article “Infographic: Email marketing is more effective than social media,” Kristin Piombino states, “Email…allows for more creativity. For example, most social networks have character and media limits.”

Ensure your audience gets the message, not just a tease on social media.

According to an infographic by 60secondmarketer.com, reading email is still the number one use of online activity, rated above checking the weather, news, social media accounts and bank balances. Social media turns off some people, especially when it crosses over into their professional lives. But almost everyone uses email in his or her work life.

A newsletter, using personalized messaging with the receiver’s name, gives the appearance of a one-on-one conversation. Emails can be sent, and even forwarded, to an exact personal contact. On social media, a share to a feed may not be seen by the most appropriate audience, but only by a select few who are monitoring that specific feed at a certain time.

Social media is more about spreading brand awareness by broadcasting to the general public, i.e. consumers. Engaging on social media might generate a giant list of followers, but subscriber email lists represent a captive audience who views the newsletter as relevant. This opt-in, or consensual marketing,” is cultivated with in-person encounters, like at trade shows.

Keep an email newsletter fresh, vibrant and on target with your audience.

• Have a main focus: What is the reason for sending the newsletter? Even if the message is part of a monthly send, the updated information should be relevant to any new issues in the market, with useful information for your audience, i.e. clients.
•  Make a plan: Have a schedule for what to post and when. Plan your content enough in advance to have it professionally crafted by a marketing team, but also be willing to adjust for any news from the industry that your company should comment on. Stick to a standard week, day and time to send a newsletter to build trust and expectations with your audience.
• Think outside of social media: Unlike “online” campaigns that target the lunch hour, send newsletters early in the morning before 7 a.m. or in the evening after 7 p.m. One of the best times to send a newsletter is Sunday evenings, when clients check their professional emails to prepare for returning to work on Monday.
• Direct readers to your website: The buckets of information in a routine newsletter should point back to content on your website, whether as links to longer blog posts about the topic or a page of products that solve the issue being discussed.

For the past year, we have worked to increase the robust content in our Mopdog monthly newsletters. As a result, the newsletters sent each month have never dipped below a 22 percent open rate, with an average click rate of 11.88 percent. That open rate is a few percentage points above the industry average, and the click rate is nearly 5 times higher than the industry average for marketing and advertising, per benchmarks from a MailChimp study.

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