Newsletters: Why do we send, read and love them so much?

What's the first thing you do when you wake up? 

Maybe make a coffee, stretch, listen to music… or check your email. 

Most people (58%) check their email before visiting social networks or reading the news, and there is a high chance that one of the emails they will receive that day is a newsletter. Certain studies show that only 10% of email users do not receive any newsletter, and almost 40% read at least 4 different ones. This means that the newsletter is a popular form of content for both users and professional communicators, but why is that? 

If you are still not using this form of email communication as part of your strategy, below we explain the biggest advantages of newsletters. 

A newsletter can be a strategic and permanent communication channel, especially compared to the ephemeral nature of social media posts — that's why two-thirds of marketers share content with their audience this way. Email delivers targeted content directly to your target group's inbox, and great personalization and segmentation options allow you to nurture relationships with users. Through the newsletter, you can share news, insights, useful information and promotions, which is why this type of communication is cost-effective and available to businesses regardless of industry and size, and you can maximally adapt the content to the nature of the brand and audience. 

Email is the channel that can be used to reach the largest number of people. If you master email communication and newsletter creation, you can reach a large number of different users — out of 8 billion people in the world, almost 4.5 billion use email. This figure becomes particularly impressive when we compare it to the total number of users of all social networks: 5 billion. Those users are fragmented on different platforms and targeting them requires mastering the specifics of each network. When it comes to newsletters, it is enough to establish the principles of creating content and spreading the list of contacts that work for you and your target group. In addition, a newsletter can be one of the cheapest forms of content, which is why the average email marketing ROI is $36 for every dollar spent, and nearly a quarter of organizations can expect an ROI of up to $70. 

The newsletter audience is highly engaged 

Not only have the people on your newsletter list decided to receive those emails from you, they've made that decision based on the value they expect to receive. This means that they are expecting your content in their inbox and the chances of them seeing and interacting with it are higher. The average open rate for newsletters is 39.7% — if we compare this to Instagram, where the average reach is 7.6%, the newsletter allows you to reach 5 times the segment of your audience. Email audiences are generally far more engaged than social media audiences — visitors to a website from a newsletter spend 80% more time than visitors from other channels, and the average click-through rate for email is 3.57%, versus 0.07% and 0.03% for Facebook and Twitter. 

The newsletter converts leads 

Most digital marketers agree that email as a channel is twice as effective at generating leads than paid social media or pay-per-click advertising. The good news is that this doesn't just apply to promotional emails, but to newsletters as well — Wired reports that those who come to their site from a newsletter are 19 times more likely to become subscribers than those who arrive via search. When they compared newsletters to Facebook and Twitter, they saw that newsletters were 12, respectively 6 times more effective at converting visitors into customers. In addition, McKinsey claims that email marketing generates almost 40 times more customers than Facebook and Twitter combined, and even 60% of people say they bought something because of an email they received. 

What is a big advantage of email communication in general is the fact that all the content (as well as the contact database) is owned and controlled by your organization. The success of your newsletter content does not depend on external factors such as changing algorithms or platforms that have the ability to remove posts and accounts, but on things that are completely within your control. If the content is tailored to the audience, well written and designed, and subscribers are collected in the right way, you can expect good results — and if none of this is true, you have the opportunity to change it. In addition, when it comes to communication with companies and brands, email leads the way as most people's favorite channel — with newsletters, people decide for themselves whether to leave the email and continue reading what you send them. This also gives them a level of control that is not present in other digital channels, and if you are dealing with B2B communications, it is important to know that 77% of B2B customers prefer to communicate with them via email. 

When we look at the available data and newsletter features, it's obvious that this form has great potential to increase sales, strengthen the connection people have with your brand, and precisely target those people who have already expressed a desire to interact with your content. In addition to these advantages, there are a large number of resources and tools at your disposal for writing and creating them, which is why they are easy to integrate into a communication strategy.