Print vs. Online Newsletters: Five Factors to Consider in Your Customer Mailings

Contractors who want to keep their customers understand the importance of staying in touch. After all, that’s how customers remember you, appreciate you and know to call you the next time they have a need. The tried-and-true way to keep this connection strong is the customer newsletter.

By getting your name in front of customers two to four times a year with helpful tips for the home, you’re building your relationship and your image. There’s no question about that. But the question that does keep coming up is this one: “Should our newsletter be sent through the mail or by email?” Adams Hudson, president of Hudson, Ink, a marketing firm that designs lead-generating marketing programs for contractors, points to five factors to help you evaluate:

Yes, the costs are different. Both email and print versions have the same upfront costs in concept development, article writing and product design. “From there, email edges out print in this category, obviously, because it doesn’t require physical materials and you save on printing and mailing. But some people stop at that fact alone when there are others to consider,” Hudson said.

People have to physically handle your print newsletter. Your customers have to decide what to do with your print mailing rather than leaving that decision to their inbox filters. And because there’s a chance they’ll place it on a counter or coffee table, they’re more likely to hold onto your newsletter – especially if they’ve noticed the coupons and want to save them for later use.

People are more likely to remember what they read. University researchers a few years back determined that readers who read The New York Times in print form remembered significantly more news stories as well as more points from those news stories than those who read the paper online. You can make the same case for your print newsletter.

You need a list either way. “If you’re sending newsletters to current customers, your data collection may be so superior that you have both physical and email addresses for everyone in your database. More power to you. But if you’re buying lists for certain markets, the physical addresses – with demographic breakdowns and such – tend to be better for targeting certain markets than email addresses,” Hudson said. Also, he added, email is affected by CAN-SPAM legislation, which requires you to offer everyone on your list an opt-out option. Direct mail doesn’t have that restriction.

If you want the relationships, resales, referrals and recurring revenue that come from retention marketing, visit www.customerretentionprogram.com or call 1-800-489-9099 for a free sample newsletter packet. And be sure to ask about the one factor that matters most…

You can balance both. It doesn’t necessarily have to be one or the other. You can double your retention marketing by integrating your print newsletter with an online newsletter portal.

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