When talking about social business, the new and broad beyond-the-tools term for social media, newsletters are often completely ignored as a channel. Several member interviews we’ve conducted recently confirms that email-based newsletters continue to be a highly effective and successful way to engage with the audience. A newsletter may be old-fashioned in the opinion of some, but it does provide a tested and proven way to interact with customers. Yet, apart from e-commerce sites, very few organisations seem to pay much attention to newsletters.

Headshift, a London-based everything-social consultancy has this somewhat focused definition of social business:

“The rise of the social web has taught us a lot about how we can significantly reduce the costs of collaboration and co-ordination inside businesses, and demonstrated the power of iterative, evolutionary processes driven by real-time data and user feedback. Social business is all about smarter, simpler, social tools, with the same quality of user experience we have come to expect from the web, that help people get things done”

This seems relevant in relation to newsletters, which are smart, simple and driven by data and user feedback.

Email may not be the right tool to reach 20 year-olds with. Many of them rely heavily on Facebook and Twitter and don’t check their e-mails several times a day. For the remaining 98% of the working population, email-based newsletters still do seem to have a useful place. Newsletters can be a massive driver of traffic to your website and also a very cost-effective way to communicate with your customers.

To quote Christian Peytz, a Danish expert on newsletters:

Newsletters are like Teletext: Old technology but still very used. Too few dedicate enough time and attention to newsletters, which can be used as a easy way to stay top-of-mind with customers

The usability experts at Nielsen Norman Group have an excellent report on Email Newsletter Usability. The executive summary explains, among other things why users generally have highly emotional reactions to newsletters. They moreover acknowledge that receiving newsletters is both preferable and more convenient than direct mailings in the physical world.

Many analysts are fascinated by emerging technology so I understand why they either ignore newsletters or totally seem to have forgotten about them. What I don’t understand is why so many don’t capitalize more on newsletters as a powerful marketing and communications tool?

Similar to other social business initiatives, a good way to get started with newsletters is by thinking of your audience, content and how newsletters may help support the goals of the organisation.

There is no question these days that every organisation needs to have website. But do all organisations also need a newsletter? While mobile technologies and social media may be talk of the town, newsletters do continue to deliver results for those organisations that deploy them wisely.

Today, e-mail newsletters have been around for 20+ years and some have become very focused, targeted and effective at using their newsletters to turn subscribers into new customers or strengthen their brand. Still, this recent tweet from Ian Truscott, VP WCM Strategy at Alterian caught my attention:

Just opened an e-mail – “Dear Client” – from a respected organisation. Go straight to trash, do not pass go, do not collect my attention.

In my view, this says much about how little progress we have made as an industry in terms of newsletters. Yes, I know that popular websites continue to crash under unusually heavy traffic, but a mistake like the above from a respected organisation just seems very out of place.

As with the rest of the Internet industry, most buyers start newsletter projects by looking at tools. As always, there is no shortage of these. You can look at tools as much as you like, perhaps the most important question is: do you really need a newsletter?

Instead of falling in love with tools, I urge you to start with the strategic questions: Who is your target audience and what are their needs? What are the measurable success criteria and how will you follow up on them? Who will own the newsletter internally?

I asked on Twitter if everybody needs a newsletter and received this intelligent response from IA and usability expert Eric Reiss:

As Tom Lehrer says, “If people cannot communicate, the very least they can do is shut up.” So the answer is generally, “no”.

What’s your view? When should organisations consider newsletters?

Full disclosure: We use iContact to send our newsletters and for email marketing. We pay list price for the service and we don’t do any consulting for vendors.