Why should you publish your marketing newsletter to your domain and make the archives accessible and searchable?

Matthew Sciannella and I discussed some interesting newsletter topics during his show, Industrial Marketing Live, on Monday and this was one of them.

It was tied into a question about how much information beyond an email address would be good to ask for when people sign up.

And my answer is this: if I could send you my newsletter without asking for anything, including your email address, I would.

Because the purpose of a marketing newsletter is to serve and deepen the brand:consumer relationship.

So I want to make it as easy as possible for you to read what I’ve written.

To binge the archives if you want.

Because my intention is not to get your email address.

Or to learn how many people work in your office.

Because forms with fields like that indicate I’m measuring you up to sell you something. And I’m not.

Instead, I’m showing you what it’s like to be supported by me, customer or not, with the bonus perk that you get to see the software I promote in action.

If you treat your newsletter like other content marketing and make it easy to browse without subscribing, then that subscription is an opt in to be alerted when you’ve posted something new, not a trade for something kept behind a locked gate.

Note: If you’re trying to build an email list to market the launch of an info product to, you may strongly disagree with me because you need those emails to sell your product. And if you sell sponsorships to your newsletter, you may disagree because you want a large list to tout to advertisers.

But I’d still challenge you to consider that the less mysterious and more available your content is, the more those subscriptions mean and the more engaged they’ll be because they’re indicating they don’t want to miss what you publish. This obviously does not apply to private or paid subscription newsletters.

Little bonus here:

I made this quick Before You Send Checklist for the people in that audience (yes, marketers, but anyone sending a newsletter can benefit from using it), and I want to share it with you:

Before you send, ask: Does this newsletter...

...deepen your relationship with your readers?

...service as a quality touchpoint with your audience? (Would YOU read it and smile?)

...remind the reader that you (or your company) cares about their success?

...provide resources that support that success?

...feel like it was sent by a human?

...deliver quality content that earns you the right to be promotional?

Please let me know if you feel like Opt In Weekly is achieving these goals, and, if not, how I could improve.

You can find this checklist on the Notion page I built for the Industrial Marketing Live talk I gave here.

Also, if you’re interested, I’ll be chatting with Dennis Shiao from The Content Corner during his Bay Area Content Marketing Meetup next Thursday, February 4, at 3 p.m. EST. Bay Area citizenship not required.

Ashley