You probably receive a large number of email newsletters into your inbox every month – unless you’ve unsubscribed from them all because they’re no good! The ones you do receive are probably deleted rather quickly – and I don’t blame you. Too many people publish newsletters that are badly written, contain poor content that you can’t use or arrive on your screen far too often. This means that email newsletters have always struggled with bad press.

However, there are some newsletters that are well written and proof read; they contain free content that you can actually use, rather than just sales pitch. And they arrive just when you were wondering if it was about time the next issue came around.

How do Email Newsletters work for Appletree?

Every month for the last 13 years I’ve been writing and publishing my own newsletter, Scribbles on the third Wednesday of the month. (Before that I used to post printed copies to my clients and contacts every month!) You can read some past issues here.

Each month, I focus on a different aspect of marketing and give my readers practical advice that they can put into action for their business. Occasionally I might include a sales piece about a workshop I’m running, or a book to buy. But most of the newsletter is just full of useful content.

Early in 2004 I met Rachel at a networking event and she asked me to do some marketing for her new business. We worked together for about a year to get her business up and running. Over the next couple of years we exchanged the occasional email and passed referrals back and forth. All the while, Rachel received her monthly copy of Scribbles.

In June this year, Rachel replied to the issue of Scribbles that I sent out. The topic was LinkedIn, but Rachel actually asked me about email newsletters. Could I help her put one together for her new business? Of course I could and that’s exactly what we’ll start doing this month. It’s taken about 10 years for Rachel to become a client again, and it didn’t even take a newsletter about newsletters to encourage her to ask me about them!

Do newsletters still work? If you write useful, practical content and you keep doing it on a regular basis, then yes, email newsletters do work. When you are consistent (as with any marketing activity) they can be one of the most cost effective ways of keeping in touch with a number of people at the same time. So my newsletter Scribbles will continue to appear in readers’ inboxes on the third Wednesday of each month for as long as they want to receive it!

If you’d like to receive your own copy, click here to fill in the sign up form.