CCG - Newsletters: Why, How, When and Where to Use Them

excerpted from
StrateScapes – Volume 1, Number 9

Newsletters: Why, How, When and Where to Use Them

Several years ago, a major Eastern bank began sending out a newsletter that provided financial education articles to its customer base. After several months, the bank was surprised to find that, in addition to higher customer satisfaction levels, sales of loans and deposits had increased 7 and 9 percent respectively. Little did they know — they had stumbled on a powerful communications tool.

Today, many companies send their customers newsletters or magazines — from banks and investment companies to department stores and health maintenance organizations. Executed properly, customer communications can be an extremely effective tool with a high return on investment. Executed poorly, a newsletter can do more to damage than good to your company’s image.

Why use customer communications?
As the Banker mentioned above found, newsletters, magazines and other customer communications CAN impact your bottom line. The case to use customer communications mirrors in many ways the case to invest in relationship marketing. A customer communications strategy may be for you if your objectives are to:

Enhance your relationships with your customers
Upsell and cross-sell products and services
Retain customers (especially best customers)
Build loyalty and advocacy among customers

A newsletter or magazine can provide excellent support to a relationship marketing program by conveying information about the program, and recognizing and rewarding best customers. As individuals, we could not build relationships with others without communicating in some way. And the same goes for building relationships with customers.

Build Credibility
Newsletters and magazines also allow you to build your company’s credibility as an expert by providing customers with educative information. Customer communications also enable companies to build store or branch traffic in a non-promotional (non-sale or discount) manner. For instance, a retailer might talk about the new fashion trend for the season to move shoppers into its stores earlier in the markdown cycle.

Convey Information
Got a lot to say? Have plenty of information to share? Customer communications work well if you need to convey complex information about your products or services on an ongoing basis. One bank, for example, uses its newsletter to educate customers about retirement planning while weaving in information about their products as examples of potential solutions.

Break Through the Clutter
Customer communications can be an excellent tool to break through junk-mail clutter. If it offers valuable information to the customer, rather than just trying to sell products, a newsletter or magazine can even become something that the customer anticipates, especially when sent frequently and regularly. Readership rates of 65 percent or better of all or most of your communication are highly attainable if the communication is well-produced and properly targeted to your audience (If only we could get those kinds of readership rates from our traditional direct mail effforts!).

Deciding Whether to Seek Help or Go Out of House
Don’t have the resources in-house? You could take your project to an agency. In addition to looking at a portfolio of work and checking references, there are a few things to think about when you are looking for a customer communications agency.

Look for an agency that has the ability to create work that supports your brand image. In most cases, avoid companies that offer “off-the-shelf” communications that allow you to insert your logo onto their piece. On the other end of the spectrum, you do not need an agency who will attempt to reinvent the wheel. Look for an agency that has worked with many different companies and has a track record of producing creative that supports their clients’ brand image.
Look for an agency that has a specific expertise in customer communications, not direct mail or mass advertising.
Make sure your agency has access to experts and resources in your field. If you are a financial services company, for example, it is critical that the agency understand your business, since many topics can be complex, and there are many regulations in how information can be conveyed.
Look for a track record of measurable results on past customer communications programs. Being able to build image and credibility for clients is great, but you also want to see how their work has helped their clients’ bottom lines.
Your customer communications agency should also have worked in a variety of mediums and formats such as fax broadcast, digital printing, magazines and Web sites, in addition to printed newsletters. You want to make sure that it has a full arsenal of options available to best communicate with your particular customer audience.

Published by Customer Communications Group, Inc., a full-service agency specializing in relationship marketing and customer communications. Our comprehensive, turnkey services include data analysis, customer segmentation, strategic consulting, account management, creative execution, print production and multimedia solutions.