Marketing strategy tips for building customer loyalty through newsletter campaigns
Is sending out newsletters still an effective way to increase customer loyalty? Our organization normally sends out new product notifications several times a year, but we are considering either a paper or email newsletter to go out more frequently. Is once a month a standard schedule? We are trying to strike a balance between keeping in touch and inundating customers with mail from us.

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There is no standard schedule for any communication with customers. The content and method, as well as the frequency, of messaging to customers is what determines value. In research I conducted on this topic several years ago, customers reported an interest in receiving communication from suppliers as long as they could see personal value in each message. This should be tested and reviewed on a continuous basis. The excerpt below is from an article I wrote called Balancing Messaging and Experience: The CRM 'Lasagna' Recipe for Creating Customer Advocacy.

    In CRM, like lasagna, it's layers of messaging and experience over an extended period; but it has to begin with messaging, i.e., how the brand promise is initially communicated and sustained, and grown, with each succeeding customer engagement and contact. Companies tend to believe that customers gain experience with their enterprises entirely through people, products and services. Largely true, as far as this thinking goes; but organizations often don't have enough awareness that what is said to customers, and how, where, and when it is said has an equal, if not greater, behavioral impact. Communication is about relevance and trust, two essential elements in the way customers see suppliers.

    Customers have grown increasingly skeptical of supplier messaging. When considering alternative suppliers or making final purchase decisions, it is now becoming well understood that the principal, previously neglected criteria are intangible, emotional, relationship benefits, with much of what is tangible seen as one-dimensional and expected. This absolutely requires that the meld between messaging and experience is as seamless as possible.

This was first published in August 2006