Signing up for a Company’s Newsletter
On Monday, February 19th, I signed up for The Children’s Advocacy Project for kids’ (CAP4Kids) Family Matters e-Newsletter because I wanted to provide thorough content for this site monitoring blog. Surprisingly, I received an email the same day stating that I had signed up but no newsletter arrived. I waited for the newsletter and checked my email account the next day but CAP4Kids did not send it. I waited a few more days still with no reply, now it has officially been one week and nothing has been sent. I find it interesting that CAP4Kids has yet to send me their e-newsletter. Needless, to say CAP4Kids left me “feeling-some-kind-of-way” and wondering when or how often they send out their e-newsletters (according to the website twice a month at most). The point is CAP4Kids does not appear to be consistent in this respect and it is somewhat frustrating. As a prospective user of CAP4Kids, why offer the newsletter and not follow through?
Despite my disappointment and in an effort to be prepared for this week’s assignment, I signed up to receive Social Media Today’s (SMT) newsletter. On Tuesday, February 20th, I signed up and the company confirmed my sign up with an immediate response on the same day via a “Thank you and Welcome” letter. To my surprise, I felt different in a good way and waited in anticipation for their e-newsletter.
SMT sent me a copy of their newsletter the very next day. And since my official sign-up request SMT emailed me four times last week (Feb. 21st, Feb. 22nd, Feb. 23rd, & Feb. 24th). The company’s prompt response made me feel valued and appreciated, to say the least. I must admit, I have viewed every email or saved the emails SMT sent me, to read at a later date. The content is relevant and I actually want to read many of the featured articles and trending topics. I’m not sure if it’s SMT’s email marketing strategy that worked or if I simply appreciated their responsiveness, or maybe it’s a combination of both.
Prior to this assignment, I was not aware of the “email marketing” principles or procedures to follow. However, I did find an article which listed some steps companies should consider and adhere to when incorporating email marketing into their business strategy. According to Peter Roester of Inc. (2014), email marketing is:
- Easily accessible from multiple mobile devices
- Inexpensive or free for customers
- Quick medium to keep customers informed
- Helps to increase online and in-store sales
- Simple to customize for existing and future marketing campaigns
If email marketing is beneficial and customers consent (via permission-based) to receive emails from businesses, why do some companies use it religiously while other companies such as CAP4Kids, use it somewhat haphazardly? According to Autoresponders Review (n.d.), “for every $1 spent, $43.00 is the average return on email marketing investment and email marketing is 20 times more cost-effective than traditional media” (para. 16). So, for the companies using email marketing haphazardly, is it simply budget-related regarding outsourcing the service, lack of personnel qualified to install and monitor email service provider software, or does it pertain to the type of industry or company it is respectively?
For example, CAP4Kids does not sell products, it only provides information to its users about local resources that those users may or may not be eligible to receive. Perhaps, CAP4Kids’ delayed response to sending out emails (approximately twice a month) would not make or break the organization. CAP4Kids’ funding does not appear to be generated from the use of their website. And they have not added any call to action for users and prospective users to donate money to the company. However, it’s possible that CAP4Kids affiliation with Nationwide Children’s Hospital allows the organization to leisurely leverage its use of email marketing at any given time.
Whether or not a company is selling a physical product, it should invest or incorporate email marketing as a part of its strategy to build customer/user loyalty. “Email marketing is a company’s direct communication channel to customers who have opted-in to receive information about products and services being offered” (Robben, 2017, para. 5). Therefore, any company conducting business online should be actively using email marketing if only to introduce and build its brand reputation. It appears that CAP4Kids could potentially lose prospects after engaging users to “sign up” for its newsletter without any follow through. It’s not only frustrating when companies do not respond but confusing. And users like myself begin to wonder what happened or question whether or not we followed the correct steps to sign up for a non-responsive company’s e-newsletter.
I began to think about the type of emails that CAP4Kids would send but I did not have any examples so I decided to create one below.
CAP4Kids’ website provides local residents with a variety of social services resources and in 2011 the company provided its users with a survey. The data CAP4Kids obtained from the survey was insightful. However, the company has not posted any other links for a current survey. CAP4Kids could send an email similar to my sample copy above to research whether or not their site is still relevant and gain more insight as to what other resources users might be interested in seeing on the website.
By doing so, CAP4Kids could add email marketing to its existing multi-channel strategy and ask participants to provide their email address after they complete the survey. Once the email addresses have been captured and stored CAP4Kids could send reminders, to the users who gave their consent, a direct link to see the updated information on the site. And the organization can measure the results by tracking and monitoring the number of emails that were delivered, sent back, opened, and clickthrough rates (Stokes, 2011, p. 452).
Email marketing is a great opportunity that CAP4Kids may want to consider. The sole purpose of the organization’s existence is to be the bridge between social services resources and families who need them. By implementing an email marketing strategy CAP4Kids can start an email campaign and incite a call to action for its users and prospective users. The company can make the emails accessible for use on mobile devices. In addition, the campaign would keep users informed of new resources without exceeding its annual budget costs.
References
Autoresponders Review. (n.d.). 9 excuses keeping you from implementing email marketing (and why they are standing in the way of your success). Retrieved March 1, 2018, from http://autorespondersreview.com/9-excuses-keeping-you-from-implementing-email-marketing/
Finn, A. (2018, January 18). 35 face-melting email marketing stats for 2018 [Web log]. Retrieved from https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/06/29/email-marketing-statistics
Robben, B. (2017, August 23). Why you’re crazy if you don’t use email marketing [Web log]. Retrieved from https://illumenmedia.com/why-email-marketing/
Roesler, P. (2014). Top 5 reasons why email marketing still works. Inc. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/peter-roesler/top-5-reasons-why-email-marketing-is-still-works.html
Stokes, R. (2011). eMarketing: The essential guide to digital marketing (5th ed). Quirk eMarketing (Pty) Ltd.
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