Newsletters are a normal part of life for many businesses. Sending out regular updates to employees, clients, shareholders, and even subscribed members of the general public is an invaluable way to stay top of mind with everyone who has some stake in your business. Newsletters are a way to disseminate important information as well as share bits of your office culture to give readers a peek into the goings on of your business, which builds both loyalty and brand trust.
The process for sending out these newsletters varies greatly from company to company. Some send out manual emails to each subscriber, complete with a personalized greeting, and others keep all their subscriber information in an Excel spreadsheet and BCC the entire list in one generic mass email.
Either of these methods may work for a small business with very few newsletter subscribers, but what happens when your subscriber list grows to the point where it becomes unmanageable?
This is where an automated newsletter management solution comes in handy.
Automated newsletter management can greatly help reduce the number of manual tasks within the newsletter sending process and even help with attracting new subscribers, expanding your reach even further. Reports generated from these automated newsletter campaigns can provide you with valuable information regarding the success of your campaigns and show you any areas where you can optimize your future newsletters to receive more engagement.
There are four distinct parts of an automated newsletter management solution, each serving to optimize the newsletter creation and distribution process by streamlining each required task.
1. Building a Database of Subscribers
Before you can leverage the automated newsletter management solution, you first need people to subscribe to your newsletter. The solution contains a secure, online database where you can store and manage all your subscribers easily and efficiently.
If you already have your subscriber list in a spreadsheet, you are able to import the spreadsheet into the database to be used in your next newsletter campaign. You are also able to create an online form that can be embedded on your business’s website or landing page that new subscribers can use to sign up to the newsletter. All submissions from this form will be automatically collected and stored in the database without you having to lift a finger!
2. Creating Newsletter Templates
How do you currently create your business newsletters? Do you write a long text email in your email client? Do you add any images or other styling? Do you have to create each newsletter from scratch?
With the automated newsletter management solution, you are able to create and design sophisticated-looking newsletters with images, videos, buttons, and other styling options that are eye-catching and engaging to read. You can also save these newsletters as templates that can be taken and re-used for future newsletter campaigns.
Are you worried that your emails will not be as personalized as ones you manually create? There’s no need to be, because the solution provides you with several ways to personalize your campaigns to each subscriber – from merge tags that pull information from each subscriber’s database profile to conditional filters that can be used to send certain parts of the newsletter to only those subscribers who meet a certain set of criteria. Personalizing your newsletters has never been easier.
3. Sending the Newsletter
Once you have your subscriber list and templates ready to go, you are then ready to send the newsletter. Forget about sending to each subscriber manually one by one – the automated newsletter management solution takes care of the sending for you! The newsletter management solution will send to all your subscribers almost simultaneously, automatically adding any personalization elements you configured when creating it.
You are also able to schedule the newsletter to be sent to your subscribers at a specific date and time. This means you can create your newsletter far in advance of when you need to send it, avoiding any sense of panic or rushing to get it done in time.
4. Analyzing the Reports
After each newsletter is sent, the automated solution will generate a report which will tell you how well your campaign performed. The report will provide you with metrics such as the open rate, click-through rate, and information regarding which sections were the most engaging for your subscribers.
These reports will help you gauge the effectiveness of your newsletters and will provide you with the insight you need to optimize your future campaigns.
Do you need an automated newsletter management solution?
As you can see, an automated newsletter management solution can provide your business with many benefits, not least of which being saved time and resources.
SimplyCast has used its all-in-one engagement automation platform to build this solution that can be used by any business or organization who regularly sends out newsletters. The solution can be modified and customized to meet the requirements of each individual business in order to provide the most seamless newsletter management process possible.
To check out SimplyCast’s newsletter management solution for yourself, be sure to click the button below to request a one-on-one demo from our team!
