E-Newsletters Are The Life Line To Your Audience

Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches – at scale

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Noise. When you think about the wave of emails that you receive on a daily basis, isn’t 80% of it just noise? When it comes right down to it, your customers probably feel the same way. And unlike many in today’s workplace, the water and wastewater professional is not one to be chained to his or her computer all day. Which means your opportunity to cut through the clutter and be heard is even smaller than most.

A recent study by First Insight, albeit about email use in the retail space, found that email has a lot of potential to build loyalty and inspire spending, but the saturation strategy used by many email marketers may prove counterproductive. The way to break through is to be creative, true and helpful in your content and to develop a consistent distribution tactic.  A rock solid email distribution plan is essential in supporting and strengthening every piece of content you create. 

It’s important to “set free” your helpful content from the confines of your site or blog and allow it to influence the market.  Engineers and operators in the water and wastewater space are very hands on by nature and being able to deliver useful information directly into their inbox or cell phone gives your company a free ticket into their world. 

Here are some other benefits of adopting an email newsletter into your marketing plan:

1. Upselling: After a customer makes an initial purchase, don’t leave additional revenue on the table. Utilize your newsletter to market products that can enhance the system they just bought or perhaps explain how other aspects of your product line would benefit them when used in conjunction with the system they just bought. If a plant purchases a pump, could they also benefit from a mixing unit? If a municipality purchases a flow meter, could they also benefit from a level sensor? Use your newsletter to create a “whole system buyer.”
2. Customer Voice: Prospects and customers will feel more loyal to your brand if they can be part of it.By allowing them to take advantage of user-generated content opportunities, you have continued to create that bond between buyer and supplier. This workforce is not just aging but it has aged, a lot. There is a ton of expertise and knowledge in this outgoing wave of systems operators and you would be pleasantly surprised at just how many are eager to share it.
3. Conversion: The end goal of any Brand Publishing activity is conversion. An email newsletter is designed to convert what I’ve referred to in the past as the casual observers into raving fans of your brand.If an engineer or operator opts to subscribe to your email newsletter they are showing you a commitment.A commitment that they are interested in more than a one-touch interaction.It’s one step in the process but a very important one so make sure it’s part of your plan.

A word of caution on this before I go and send you down the path.  This is easy to do wrong. If you only utilize an email newsletter to talk about your company in a self-serving way (i.e. awards, news, promotions, trade show appearances, etc...), it will fail.  Create reader-centric content, land on your means of delivery and you’ll be off to a great start.  As always, if you need help or further guidance, feel free to contact me.