The Crave
Monthly tips and stories that will help you do your job and make you smile (or groan).
By Richard Francis February 28, 2023
Is your customer 'news' actually newsworthy?
As the world moves from a 'growth at all costs' narrative towards the more 'traditional' search for profit, customer care moves front and center.
And at the center of a successful, customer-led growth strategy is the customer newsletter—the sometimes underrated old friend, which got automated to the point it almost reads like a ChatGPT prompt. 🤖
Your newsletter must be proactive, helpful, and concerned if you want to engage customers. You must invest time in gathering insights and advice that benefit them. You need to create a newsletter that shows you care.
But wait! Should we invest more time in our newsletter instead of creating 5 new TikTok videos that make us 'relevant'?
Yes! And I'm not saying this because of the slight generational gap. 😉
While TikTok is a powerful marketing channel, your follower base is too wide, a mix-and-match of prospects, customers, employees, and random accounts looking to increase their follower base.
The customer newsletter is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools at your disposal because it lets you communicate directly with your customers in a bespoke way. And with great power comes great responsibility! If you're looking for new ways to engage subscribers, here are a couple of the changes I've been implementing at Foleon that you can bring back to your team:
🧑🤝🧑 Moving away from what WE want to tell customers to what THEY care about
"We have exciting news." That's great, but if you use that opening line often, you inadvertently make the reader a witness instead of an active participant in your newsletter and risk losing them.
💡 Ensure the newsletter makes your customer the story participant from the start by tackling a pain point/adding value in the opening paragraph.
🔍 Tackling the proximity issue
If you're too close to the product and brand, any change becomes a possible 'news' subject. Take a step back.
Upsell emails with 'Upgrade now' CTAs are not a customer communication strategy. You need to supply interesting, engaging content that supports the customer in achieving their objectives.
💡 For every news item, ask yourself: Why should they care?
If the answer is "because we invested a lot of money into this feature," you're approaching it from the wrong perspective. If it's "because this will help them reduce X or be better at Y," your news is relevant.
🤩 Keeping relevant
And while we're on the topic of relevance, your customers care about more things than just your brand and product. (This should not be a spoiler 😉)
💡 Addressing wider industry topics/concerns in your customer newsletter demonstrates its value. A section covering industry news is easy to create, and you can repurpose it on other communications channels you use. It's a win-win!
🪁 Turning the newsletter into an engaging experience
People tend to scan newsletters before settling down to read them. Visual assets such as photos, illustrations, videos, interactive graphs, and so forth can make or break the memorability of your newsletters.
💡Engage your readers with different media formats or interactive data elements. Like I do below. 😉
Email marketing revenue in 2020
According to Statista, email marketing revenue is on the rise, and it's expected to reach $17.9 billion by 2027.
Seconds attention span
Readers spend 12 seconds (average) on an email before navigating away.
Do it well, and you'll see better CSM engagement, better customer conversations, reduced churn, and increased lifetime value. Customer newsletters have a real, significant business value.
Let's talk about it together!
Share your thoughts on LinkedIn using #TheCraveDiscussion This week's topic: How are you creating customer newsletters that are truly customer-centric? 👀
Richard Francis
VP of Marketing
About the author
I'm Foleon's leading storyteller. With 15+ years of experience in marketing, I'm convinced that storytelling is at the core of business success. In my spare time, you can find me in the garden, growing goods for the kitchen.
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