Email Newsletters vs. Blogs Part 2

My post several weeks ago about the emergence of blogs and the decline of the e-newsletter drew a thoughtful comment from Monty Loree of Express Marketing. Mr. Loree contended that "With direct email, you're in control of staying in touch with people and inviting them back to your site." While that's indusputable, my point was that you don't need a traditional email newsletter to accomplish that task.

As Suzanne Falter-Barns points out in her blog here, collecting email addresses from your blog visitors is both easy and a great supplement to RSS feeds. Then, rather than sending out a traditional e-newsletter -- with all of the planning and formatting that requires -- you can simply send a brief note to your email list each time you post (or weekly if you are posting more frequently than that) inviting your recipients to revisit your blog and check out your latest musings.

Your blog becomes the content container for the information you would have previously included in your e-newsletter, but with all the advantages of blogs -- timliness, informality and search engine-friendliness.

You can also feel free to copy my "build your own newsletter" concept. It may appear lazy, but I prefer to think of it as innovative.

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Terms: email newsletter, e-newsletter, business blogging, internet marketing

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com