How Your Newsletter Is Ruining Your Reputation

Here’s how B2B companies ruin their reputation with email newsletters:

Someone within the company decides it’s a good idea to have an email newsletter.

But they don’t have a contact list to send this email newsletters to.

And that’s uncomfortable, especially when that person needs to report to leadership and explain why they want to send an email newsletter to 3 people.

The explanation to leadership should be, “This is a long-term play with the goal to build an asset by learning how to write newsletters that add value to our prospects.”

But that takes time. And it’s much easier to download an email list from Zoominfo, with people who fit your customer profile based on firmographics, and blast them with your newsletter.

Because look at the potential: send it to 10,000 emails, and maybe 5 people will buy from us or turn into leads (and the “newsletter” is usually not built around education, it’s a promotional email on product features or discounts).

But here’s what actually happens:

1. No one buys because they don’t know you, trust you, or have the problem you solve.

2. 50% of your audience unsubscribes and are not only not buying, but are less likely to *ever* buy from you.

Because when I get a promotional newsletter from someone I have never heard of, not only will I not work with them, but I’ll also never work with them in the future.

To be clear: I don’t have a problem with email newsletters.

We have one ourselves and also create them for our customers. They’re a great tool to stay on top of mind with prospects and leads.

But, it needs to be understood as a long-term play.

So you should only send your email newsletter to people who opted into it.

And there are a couple of ways you can do that:

1. Add an opt-in form to your website where people can sign up for your newsletter.

2. Send a short email to all people you’ve had a sales conversation with:

“Hey [Name], we just started a this newsletter where we teach people how to do X better. Would you be interested in that?”

X being the thing you solve. Add those people who say yes to your email list.

Maybe you’ll start with only 5 or 50 people, and that’s fine.

Because the goal is to slowly grow it over time by figuring out the topics your audience cares about and to create a newsletter that people want to actually read and forward to collegues.

3. Tell your salespeople to ask every prospect who didn’t close whether they would live to get tips and insights from you.

50% of them will agree, because clearly they care about what you have to say and are dealing with the problem you’re solving.

Now you have a “follow-up sequence” to stay top of mind and build more trust with them. So, if 6 months down the line, their situation changed and they now *do* have the budget or resources, you’re the first person who comes to mind.

That’s the right way to utilize your email newsletter.