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How To Use Print Newsletters As A Killer Customer Retention Tool

September 21, 2008 on 12:15 am | In Offline marketing | 9 Comments

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Although I focus on using the Internet to set up uber-profitable lead generation pipelines for our small business and corporate clients, there is one “offline” client retention strategy that I endorse above all others:

The monthly newsletter.

I’m not talking about the trite B.S. that passes for most company newsletters (if they publish anything at all), but rather relevant information and advice that your prospects WANT to tear open and absorb the moment they receive it in the mail.

ESPECIALLY if you’re in an “information-centric” industry with a high average transaction value, newsletters can add huge value to clients AND stack up well economically for you.

3 or 4 pages of content, plus relevant article clippings or exhibits of interest to your customers (i.e. leveraging other people’s content) is a simple formula that works.

Yes, putting it together involves an investment of time or money, but the returns can be well worth it. One concept I enlarged upon in one of my print newsletters to a client directly resulted in a $72,000 contract. Maybe I would have got the work anyway, but I would rather have it sooner rather than later

And once the first copy is complete, the marginal cost of printing and sending each additional copy is marginal — less than $5.

Again, depending on your industry, you can even make the whole process cashflow positive by selling subscriptions to non-clients for, say, $37 per month on a good-till-cancelled basis. As long as you can create enough value to make the subscription price pales in comparison, it’s a goer. 1,000 subscribers @ $37 per month equals a $444,000 annual revenue stream. Sure, getting 1,000 people to sign up to your newsletter isn’t easy — you have to be great at what you do and great at marketing what you do.

But even if you only had enough subscribers to pay for the cost of the mailing, wouldn’t that be worth the value of keeping in touch with customers on a regular basis?

Although it sounds like heresy for an “Internet guy” to say this,Email communication just doesn’t cut it. Email is great for communicating with PROSPECTS, but once a prospect becomes a client the economics can usually support a print version.

Your customers can hold print newsletters in their hands, mark them up and annotate them, circulate them around the office with Post-It notes attached, and most importantly, NOT delete them from their overstuffed email inboxes (although the wastepaper basket is always within easy reach, so you have to be good.)

The best way to test this strategy is to commit to a number of issues (say 6 or 12) and follow through on your commitment. If it’s not worth the effort, there’s no harm done and you can stop doing it (though you’ll have 6 or 12 high-quality autoresponder emails in the can for your trouble.)

If you don’t have the time to co-ordinate this, speak to a copywriting or marketing agency who can handle the whole strategy for you. (I’m even considering offering this as a packaged service to clients, but I’m not actively marketing this at the moment).

Give it a try — I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.

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9 Comments »

9 Comments »

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Interesting article. I know that Dan Kennedy talks a lot about printed news letters. Out of interest, do you publish a print newsletter yourself? I couldn’t see any reference to it anywhere on your blog.

Comment by Sakura — September 26, 2008 #
Hi Sakura – yes, DK is a big advocate of print newsletters and they seem to be regaining popularity in the marketing community once again. I do indeed publish a print newsletter, but it is “clients only” at this stage. I have plans to offer it to non-clients later this year / early next year.

Cheers, Will

Comment by Will — September 29, 2008 #
“The wastepaper basket is always within easy reach, so you have to be good.”

I think this is the key point Will. Too many business newsletters are filled with boring “news” about the company. And then they wonder why the phone doesn’t ring.

Back in the day, newsletters were a favourite tactic of David Ogilvy for promoting his advertising agency.

Comment by Charles Cuninghame — October 3, 2008 #
@Charles – I didn’t know that about David Ogilvy. Interesting.

Although I am obviously biased, I believe company newsletters should be outsourced to a pro, or at least delegated to a skilled in-house marketer. One mistake that I have seen some business owners make is that they delegate their newsletter to “the admin girl or guy”, populate it with thoroughly yawn-worthy info, then wonder why it doesn’t achieve the desired marketing result.

Comment by Will — October 6, 2008 #
Funnily this had not occured to me until now. I think it really depends how much value you place on retaining customers, or more to the point, how much additional value they are worth to you. If, for example, you build someone a website, will sending them a newsletter a month with hints and tips about promoting their business, and a digest of everything that’s gone on in the previous 30 days, result in you getting any more work from them? If so, then it could very well be a very useful practise… Perhaps for larger value clients where more work is up for grabs, this could apply, but for some of our smaller clients, they simply don’t have any more money to spend… Horses for courses as they say, but very interesting advice.

Comment by Price Compare — February 16, 2009 #
I have had some real success in sending out printed newsletters so can attest that it is worth doing. I have gotten good returns from badly written newsletters.

Comment by Grant — April 16, 2009 #
Good article though I’m not sure that I’d agree that “email doesn’t cut it.” There are a whole lot of business owners who would never go through the trouble of putting together a print letter, but who could certainly benefit by emailing their customers about special events, promotions, industry updates, etc.

Comment by Alan — July 22, 2009 #
Email is great for communicating with prospects, but once a prospect becomes a client the economics can usually support a print version.

Comment by web development company — July 28, 2009 #
sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,

Comment by ppc management services — January 11, 2010 #