A Free-Reprint Article Written by: Judy Murdoch
Article Title:
Blog Posts Versus Email - Which is Better for Marketing?
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Article Description:
Up until fairly recently, when you wanted to keep in touch
with customers and prospects, you used email to send
periodic messages to people who opted-in to receive your
mailings. People are suggesting that with the rise of
blogging, that the death knell of email is upon us. This
article will consider the demise of opt-in email as the best
way to communicate with your customers.
Additional Article Information:
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932 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line
Distribution Date and Time: 2010-11-04 10:45:00
Written By: Judy Murdoch
Copyright: 2010
Contact Email: mailto:judy@judymurdoch.com
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Blog Posts Versus Email - Which is Better for Marketing?
Copyright (c) 2010 Judy Murdoch
Highly Contagious Marketing
http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
There's been an interesting discussion going on in a class I'm
co-facilitating about the best way to reach customers and
prospective customers:
* Should you post your articles on a blog?
* Should you email those articles to people who have subscribed
to your list?
* Or something else?
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The Death of Opt-in Email?
========================================
Up until fairly recently, when you wanted to keep in touch with
customers and prospects, you used email to send periodic messages
to people who opted-in to receive your mailings.
For example, since 2005 I've been emailing my Contagious
Marketing Ezine on a monthly basis (more recently bi-monthly).
Over the past few years, blogging has generated a lot of
excitement as the best, coolest way to market your products and
services online and the word is that "email is history. "
Arguments in favor of Email's impending demise include:
* Email is less and less successful when it comes to reaching
peoples' in-boxes.
People are so sick of spam, they're using aggressive settings to
get rid of anything that has the faintest whiff of being an
unwanted sales pitch.
More often your email is languishing in a Junk Mail folder ... or
even going straight to the Trash.
* People are reluctant to share any personal information
including their email address.
You don't need to share any information when you are visiting a
blog to access free articles, services, and so on.
* People don't have time to read articles. Blog posts are
shorter and better fit our limited attention spans.
* Blogs and social media applications like Twitter and Facebook
allow people to interact. Email is only one way.
The "impending death of email" makes many small business owners
nervous: should they invest any time or effort into growing an
opt-in subscriber list? Or should they bag the idea of a
subscriber list and just work on their blogs?
========================================
Opt-in Email: Not Dead Yet Baby
========================================
Although blogs and social media have opened up some very cool
ways of connecting businesses to a communities which include but
are not limited to their customers, I believe opt-in email still
has a place in your small business' marketing strategy.
* An opt-in is a higher form of commitment.
When we give something, even something very small like our email
address and permission for someone to send us stuff on a regular
basis, we are making a small but significant commitment.
It is an action that tells the business owner that we are
interested in what they are offering.
* Because of the implied commitment, an opt-in allows more
latitude for offering products and services you are selling.
People are a lot more sensitive about blogs posts and social
media that push sales pitches their way.
Personally, I have no problem reading an offer emailed to me if I
opted into the list. But if someone I follow on Twitter, for
instance, sends me a direct message asking me to "check out"
some program they're selling, I stop following them.
* Opt-in email allows you to control who gets what and when.
Most opt-in email management services like Aweber, Constant
Contact, MailChimp, etc allow you to create different groups to
whom you can customize offers and information.
* Some people just aren't open to getting information through
blogs. I'm horribly embarrassed to admit this publicly but I
rarely, if ever, read my RSS feeds. I use blogs quite a bit,
especially when I'm doing research and want to find out what
others have to say on a topic but as way to keep in touch with a
business, nope, I still prefer getting articles emailed to my
inbox.
My Recommendation: a Hybrid Solution Rather than dumping one or
the other, I use and recommend you consider using a "hybrid
solution which allows you to take advantage of both technologies
so that you can benefit from the unique benefits each offers.
Here's what I do which, so far, has worked for me and adds
minimal work:
1. I write my articles as blog posts directly within my blog.
2. Once my post is finished and edited, I copy and past the post
as a message in aweber. Aweber is the service I use to email my
articles to everyone subscribing to my Contagious Marketing
ezine.
3. I use the application, Ping.fm to send a new post to my
Facebook, Linked In and Twitter accounts which announces the new
article and provides a link for anyone wanting to read it.
And voila! People who prefer to get my article emailed to their
inbox get the article. People who prefer to subscribe to my blog
get the article via RSS feed and people who follow me on Twitter
or Facebook or LinkedIn get a link to the article post on my
blog.
It isn't a perfect system: I include offers to buy products and
services in my email articles. I don't currently sell much on my
blog.
And I'm still getting a sense of what kinds of offers work using
Twitter and Facebook.
But it allows me to reach people who prefer opt-in email and
people who prefer subscribing to blog posts and allows me to
benefit from including offers as well as encouraging the two-way
conversation that blogs facilitate.
========================================
Bottom Line
========================================
If you're a small business owner trying to sort through how best
to communicate regularly with customers and other communities, I
encourage you to use both opt-in email AND blogging.
Both methods offer unique advantages and you can adapt a system
like mine which allows you to send your messages through both
without spending much extra time.
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Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost,
effective marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals,
guerrilla marketing activities, and selected strategic alliances.
To download a free copy of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt?
Marketing Solutions to the problems that Drive Your Customers
Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or judy@judymurdoch.com
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