A few weeks ago, a prospect reached out to us via the contact form on our website.
He was the owner of an agency on the East Coast and wanted to learn more about our services. One of our salespeople got in touch with him, started the official sales process and the rest was history.
Somewhere along the conversation, we asked how the prospect had heard of us. He said he signed up for our newsletter last spring and had seen our weekly content marketing digest in his inbox every week since.
Every few weeks, the prospect saw an article from our blog that piqued his interest and proceeded to read. Sometimes, he would go from that blog to another blog, or spend some extra time poking around our site. He did not need our services any of those previous times — none of his clients were asking for social media services — but then, one day, someone asked.
By that point, the decision was easy. He received our weekly digest, clicked through to our agency services tab and got in touch with us, and that was that.
Stories like these are more common than you think. More importantly, they demonstrate a critical lesson that all businesses in this era should take to heart: newsletters are extremely powerful tools.
The power of the newsletter lies in its ability to get your business — its name, its content, its expertise, its brand — in front of people week or month, in and out.
Given how sales cycles work today, that is invaluable. Decision makers at businesses are not sitting idly by in hopes that a salesperson is going to call them and offer a solution. They are educating themselves, pushing themselves down the pipeline and doing all the research they can until they decide it is time to buy and get in touch with a salesperson. There is a good chance that the business they call is going to be the one they are most familiar with — the one whose name and content they have seen the most.
With a newsletter list of 5,000 people, even if only 5 percent of people open your newsletter every week, that’s 250 people each week seeing your content and becoming more familiar with your brand.
Those people may not be buying your product or service today, tomorrow or in 2 weeks from now, but when they do decide to buy, who do you think they are going to call: someone they have never heard of, or a business whose newsletter they signed up for and have received every week for months leading up to the purchase?
I know which one I would choose.
Image credit: CC by dacian dorca-street photographie
