Email marketing vs. newsletter advertising

Are you confused about the difference between email marketing and email newsletters? You’re not alone! It's a common misconception that sending out email newsletters and using email marketing to advertise your goods or services are the same thing.

In this article, we’ll discuss email marketing and newsletter advertising, their differences and how both might fit into your marketing strategy.

Let's start by defining each of them separately:

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a marketing channel that enables the customers on your email list to be informed of new products, discounts and other services that you offer. It also serves to inform your customers of the benefits of your brand or to keep them interested in your content in between purchases.

In essence, the goal of email marketing is to motivate your customers to take at least one action, typically convincing them to urgently subscribe or make a purchase.

Email marketing is one of the most successful marketing channels available when you want to grow your brand or sell your products.

Newsletters

A newsletter is an email that's sent out on a regular basis and updates your subscribers on any relevant news, tips or updates regarding your products, services or organisation.

A newsletter does contain advertisements but the main goal is to inform subscribers of news, not to sell them something.

The primary distinction between the two is that theobjective of a newsletter is to inform and engage customers, hereas sales are the main goal of an email marketing campaign.

Let's discuss how both of these can help you succeed now that we have reviewed what each of these is and how they differ.

What qualities make an excellent marketing email?

A successful marketing email should only have one goal and concentrate on one action at a time. Nothing in the email should be included that might detract from the reader's ability to take the intended action.

Including too many calls to action (CTAs) in one marketing email is a common mistake made by many marketers. They fall into this trap because they desperately wish the subscriber would make some sort of purchase. In actuality, this is a bad idea. This, like any offers with too many options, may lead to no purchases being made at all.

The best marketing or promotional emails are timely, written in the consumer's language and instill a sense of urgency for the customer to respond to the CTA. All links from the email go directly to a landing page that enables them to get what they want or do what you want them to do.

Therefore, focusing a marketing email on just one objective—a call to action to start a sales process—makes it clearer for the customer and more quantifiable for the marketer.

What qualities make an excellent newsletter?

As stated before, newsletters can be used to give information about your business and what you offer to your customers but they are not highly sales focused. Rather, they are designed to inform and engage.

Newsletters are typically used differently across different industries. A newsletter might contain:

• A message from the CEO
• Company updates
• Customer testimonials and feedback stories
• Links to sections of your website and social media pages with useful content
• New product releases
• Links to studies, blogs, videos and articles that your audience might find interesting
• Your company's operations behind the scenes

Newsletters are a great platform to introduce yourself and your company to potential consumers and to stay on existing customers' minds.

How often to send email marketing campaigns

Daily marketing emails can be overwhelming and frustrating, unless recipients are specifically looking for a daily bargain offer. For this type of email, the majority of subscribers can handle a weekly marketing email.

How often to send newsletters

In extremely busy markets, some email newsletters are distributed daily but others with less pressing issues or slower activity could opt for a weekly or monthly frequency.

Despite the fact that receiving emails too frequently in either instance is irritating, you should be aware that the less frequently you send emails, the more likely it is that subscribers will forget they ever signed up for them and unsubscribe. So, strike a balance.

Should you do both?

Numerous companies send out email newsletters as well as email marketing campaigns. In fact, that could be a successful strategy. The objectives of these two campaigns should not be mixed, though. When a newsletter becomes too sales-oriented, subscribers deem the marketers message as a low-key sales pitch. So, marketers must be very careful.

Strike a balance

A perfect balance between the different kinds of content and promotions you send to your subscribers is necessary for effective email communication. Both types of emails have advantages and you will probably find that they function most effectively when used in tandem.

By generating interest in specific goods or services, your newsletter can drive traffic to your email marketing efforts and vice versa.

In conclusion, newsletters and email marketing are very different from one another but that does not stop them from enhancing one another; both can be used in the overall strategy for marketing communication. It is, however, important to distinguish clearly between their content, periodicity and the recipients of each of these emails in order to achieve the best complementarity.