Instead of ‘Newsletters,’ Why Not Make Them ‘ME-letters?’
Posted on | February 12, 2010 | No Comments
ME-letters? Exactly.
It’s an idea offered up by Nick Panayi, one of the other marketing experts at Focus.com, in response to our question, “Why do we continue to call them NEWSletters?” You might recall that recently we wrote about a response from Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B marketing strategist at Marketing Interactions Inc.
Nick Panayi
Nick, founder and CEO of emorfie, a marketing consultancy for emerging companies, is a 19-year veteran of marketing and strategic planning in technology-related industries. Here’s what he had to say about how companies should adapt the concept of NEWSletters to today’s markets:
“The question really brings to light a marketing practice that I think is still valuable yet is in desperate need of redefinition. I think the fact that we do have plentiful and instantaneous information available at our fingertips can actually be used to enhance these ‘reach-outs’ to our customers and prospects. The fact that all this information is indeed out there, long before the ‘newsletter’ gets to me, the reader, is not really an issue because there’s no way I can keep up with the flow of information anyway.
“What can be a potent tool for a marketer are e-nurturing tools that keep track of the reader’s preferences (based on what I say as well as what I do over a period of time) and then they custom design a ‘dynamic’ newsletter which assimilates disparate data elements into a usable (and also visually appealing) format that I can view at my leisure.
“I don’t need to know the information the minute it happens. I want to read it at MY time schedule. Much like we do with time-shifting on DVRs. So this is the long way of saying…the ‘newsletter’ may be dying but the “ME-letter” is just being born.”
We like this “ME-letter” concept. It’s an interesting way to describe not just the personalization of content that marketers can do for their readers, but how readers absorb content on their own terms. And while SMBs may not have the resources or tools to achieve these results today, paying more attention to what individuals want to hear or read about and delivering information that is more targeted and segmented is a step in the right direction.
How do you find out what your readers want to hear? Without website tracking tools or a large tracking database, one easy way to do this is to ask. A simple and fast survey to your customers is easy to do. Provide an incentive for participation – or not – and review the results. That’s what we did recently with our own online survey tool…and one of the results is this series of posts on NEWSletters…or ME-letters, in this case.
Keep tuning in for more on how to get the word out to your customers and prospects in meaningful fashion. We’d love to hear your thoughts in response…
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