Hello, and welcome to the Theory of Marketing Relativity podcast. I'm Jess Burton, a marketing specialist here at Epic Marketing Consultants Corporation. Let's talk all things marketing and merchandising with our Epic team.
Amy:and welcome to our Theory of Marketing Relativity podcast. I am your stand in host once again, Amy Warrington, the creative director here, and today we are talking to Bre, my creative team coordinator who keeps me focused and on task and keeps everything running here at Epic. So Bre, welcome.
Breanna:Hi, Amy, thanks for having me.
Amy:It's great to have you here. Even though it was kind of like pulling teeth to get you on; everybody, she's slightly nervous, but it's okay. You're gonna do fine. Did I just like embarrass you now?
Breanna:No.
Amy:Okay, so today, we're gonna be talking about this one essential marketing tool that does sometimes get overlooked by some of the flashier and sexier items out there. But that is your company newsletter. So Bre, what really is a newsletter, and what kind of things can you do with it.
Breanna:So a newsletter, whether print or digital is kind of like the highlight reel of your company. They can vary often in frequency and the length depending on your industry or your needs. But typically, they will just focus on bringing your recipients' attention to things that have happened within that time period. So top content, which could be publications, articles, or blog and social posts, upcoming events or event recaps, promotions for sales, new products, or limited time offers, and any company business news that might seem important like employee promotions, new hires, merges, and so on. And really an effective newsletter will do more than just summarize what's happened since maybe your last one came out and will also include calls to action that propose ways for recipients to interact with you and your content. So these calls to action could typically be centered around driving traffic to your website, social media accounts to grow your following, getting recipients to sign up for an event, or maybe take advantage of a promotion that you're running. So they're kind of twofold.
Amy:Okay, so not only are we using them to kind of talk about what's going on in our company, like fun wise, but we can also use it to promote some of the different products and services that we have that we want to highlight. Well, that's cool. So what different newsletters then are your favorite that you personally subscribe to.
Breanna:So personally, all the newsletters that I subscribe to are related to my career in some way, shape, or form. So that could mean professional development opportunities, organizations I've been a part of, or past and current clients to stay in the loop about what's important to me. I know other people are kind of hot on subscribing to different news sites and things like that. And I get my news other ways. But that's really where I center my subscriptions on. So like I said, everyone is different, has varying things that they are interested in. But in my inbox, you'll see enewsletters from Epic Marketing, obviously, Rutgers University, which is my alma mater,
Amy:Oh my gosh, Bre, we're enemies.
Breanna:Why? Where are you from?
Amy:Well, not from where I'm from. And I guess we're not rivals anymore. But I graduated from West Virginia and we hated Rutgers.
Breanna:Oh, this rivalry but this brings a whole new meaning to our work relationship.
Amy:A whole new meaning that the last time Rutgers came to West Virginia when I was there, it was for a football game. And I think West Virginia lost so West Virginia was like extra pissed off about it and it was at home. And my friend Kate, she was from New Jersey and but went to West Virginia and they bashed in her car. She was so mad. And then this is why it's very very important when you go to one of those super intense schools from out of state that you make sure everybody at the school knows you go there. So yeah. So I'm sorry, that was way off tangent, but I didn't feel like you were a Rutgers girl. I might have rethought our interview.
Breanna:Right, well, it was there at the top of my resume, but I think our interview kind of surpassed all of that.
Amy:I think so, too. I'm glad you joined. But um, next this coming football season, we'll have to see if there's a Rutgers/West Virginia game.
Breanna:I have to say I've never been to a game so if it makes you feel any better I'm from Rutgers Camden campus, so I totally view myself as separate and away from Rutgers.
Amy:Okay, we can still be friends.
Breanna:Okay, right? So I'm not a New Brunswick girl. I, you know, I'm really happy that I chose the Camden campus. But I've never been to a game. And I feel that I totally slacked in that department. So I'm proud of my alma mater. But that would probably put the cherry on top of the cake there, we should definitely see what's coming up.
Amy:I think definitely. So in fact, it's kind of funny how many friends you can make through your alma mater. But sorry, we are getting off topic, the topic is newsletters. But that brings up an interesting newsletter, do you so you read your Rutgers newsletter for your alumni?
Breanna:I do. I do. I also stay in touch with the newsletters and other emails that are going to come out of the admissions office because I used to work in the admissions office. And some of the people that are working there currently are my old coworkers. So I like just kind of seeing what they're working on, getting new ideas from things that they're putting out. So that again, is also like a twofold reason why I subscribe to those, those emails.
Amy:Okay, so see, I do not subscribe to my alma mater's emails for their alumni association. I do follow them on LinkedIn, but I don't follow them on other channels. And I do flip through the printed newsletter/magazine that they send me sometimes. So I guess let's talk a little bit about the differences then between doing a digital newsletter and doing a print newsletter. And do you think one of them is maybe better than the other? Does it kind of depend on who's getting that? What are your different thoughts about the different types of newsletters that there are now.
Breanna:So as somebody who is 26, I'm really big on digital or enewsletters. I think they're more convenient, I think they're more easily accessible. However, you do bring up a really good point about the alma mater, like print newsletters, because I always flip through those. And they're one of the only ones that I actually physically look at and hold in my hands, that doesn't just go directly like in the junk mail pile. So that's funny, and I wonder what the what the major reason for that is, but that just goes to show then that print newsletters can be super effective, depending on your target audience, and depending on your industry. So if you're aiming to grab the interest and get your news to an older audience who maybe enjoy reading newspapers, or actually check the mail regularly, which I will admit I do not then the more expensive print newsletter might be worth going for. However, more and more people are coming online even regardless of age, and print newsletters could potentially become more obsolete as time goes on. So just depending on who you are, as a company or an industry, and who your audience is, it might make sense to stay print, it might make sense to do both. Or it might be worth thinking about just solely going digital. It really depends on who you're catering to, at the time and who you plan to cater to in the future.
Amy:And I really like that point of your audience now and who you want your audience to be. And I think that's like a really good point that we as marketers need to keep in mind and that what has always worked might not always work because I know, I used to work inside the in-house marketing department for a credit union, which is where I cut my teeth really marketing wise. And we went all out. And we did a lot of stuff in print while I was there. But after a couple years, we started really making that shift to digital because it was a lot better on our marketing budget or not having to pay for all of the different print collateral. And we started doing some tests with it, we started sending out the newsletter, as we always did in our little magazine, both in print to our people. And then we started sending it out in digital form. And we started seeing who was reading more and where we were getting more referrals and who was interacting with the content and where and by, you know, just doing some of that testing and seeing what worked and what didn't it really helped to shape kind of like that new digital direction that they started to head in. So let's talk a little bit about optimization and AB testing and how do you decide what works and what doesn't?
Breanna:So there are a lot of different ways to measure your performance, even with it might be hard to imagine like how can you measure how people are receiving like print newsletters, for example, but what's really popular now are things like QR codes.
Amy:Yup.
Breanna:So if you include those on your print newsletters, you can actually look up the analytics for how many times that QR code has been accessed and things like that. But then with regards to the digital newsletters or enewsletters, you have a lot more options for looking at those kind of like performance metrics or performance indicators, some of the more important ones are open rates. So essentially how many recipients open your enewsletter, your email, and that's a good indicator of how interested they are in your content. The open rate basically is just Okay, I see it in my inbox, I'm clicking it, I'm opening it. And those things that they're seeing that are helping them make that decision, are the subject lines and pre headers, essentially.
Amy:I do love me a good subject line.
Breanna:Right, and then another is click through rates. So now they've opened the email, are they clicking a button, an image, a logo, a hyperlink, a social icon, what are they clicking, if anything in that enewsletter, and that really speaks more so to the actual success of the newsletter as a whole rather than the success of the subject line and the preheader, because it tracks the recipient's engagement. And it just takes it that extra step further. Then there's some other things that other KPIs that people might ignore, because they don't seem important to measuring success. But you can take a look at your bounce rates, which are when the email doesn't reach the intended recipient's email, and it bounces back, so to speak. So if you have a high bounce rate, that might be an indicator that you can clean up your email contact list, you might get a more accurate read on your other KPIs. So that's an important thing to consider as well. And then there are your unsubscribe rates. So somebody, if people are frequently unsubscribing, from, you know, your email communications or your enewsletter, you might want to measure and rethink your approach. Are you emailing them too frequently? Is the content robust or relevant enough? And if you want to really get to the root of why that's happening, you can consider sending out polls and things like that, digitally, so that people can say, when they unsubscribe, for example, why are you unsubscribing because I'm getting emails too frequently, and so on and so forth.
Amy:I think one of my favorite things is to unsubscribe from an email list that annoys me, I do it with such flourish. And, like, take special pride in picking the option of why I did. But also just to call out to anybody who is listening. KPI is a key performance indicator. Bre went through a lot of information right there. And I wanted to make sure you guys were following what the KPI stood for because we use a lot of internal jargon, sometimes it's hard to get out of that. Okay, so we talked about different things you can measure, different ways to improve those measurements. We've talked about some of our favorite newsletters. We've talked about ways that newsletters can send you out to different pieces of content, we have covered a lot in a very short space of time. Is there anything else that we haven't touched on that we want to talk about?
Breanna:Um, well, for the most part, like my advice at all, when you're working with, especially digital enewsletters, is that you should look at this as kind of like play in imagination, right? So you can play around with different subject lines and pre headers, versus like putting a question out there versus a statement in your subject. And then looking at those rates to see if one works better than the other. You can imagine and put yourself in the shoes of the recipient and think about the emails that you just delete, or the emails that you open and why. Like, for example, I've noticed about myself with regards to receiving emails, if a subject line's too vague, I'm I'm not going to open it. But if a subject line's too specific, I won't open it either, because I've got all the information I needed from the subject line.
Amy:Right, that's true.
Breanna:My favorite example of that is like if Nerd Wallet, who I have an account with, puts an email in my inbox, and it says, Your credit score went up. And then the pre header is See what cards you qualify for. I'm not going to open the email because I have the information I want. My credit score went up, I'm happy with that. And I am not currently interested in opening any more cards.
Amy:Exactly.
Breanna:You know, you playing around and just figuring out what works best, what information is just the right amount versus too much or too little. What are the people that are receiving your emails going to be interested in? Have they seen it in their inbox eight times before? How can I switch that up? And how can I play and imagine that I'm in that recipient's or my target audience's shoes? So that's, that's the most important thing that I think is worth taking away. It's like, you know, just because you do it one way doesn't mean you have to continue to do it that way. And if you make some changes or try some new things out and you see some of those open rates or click rates drop, you just go back to the way you were doing it or try something else, you know, it's not the end of the world. The print newsletters are a little more concrete and solidify, once you've made your choices again, which is another reason why I'm a huge fan of enewsletters or digital newsletters. But either way, like, play around with it, see what works, what doesn't. And, and take notes and keep track of your of your data and your metrics, and all that stuff to inform whatever moves you make going forward.
Amy:Yes, and I want to add to that, it's called AB testing, not A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K testing, when you are doing these tests, and when you are trying to optimize, don't make one headline blue, one headline green, but then change the paragraph in the headline that you change this color, but keep it the same in this one, but then test this on this and this on this, make sure that you keep one the same. And make your changes on the other one, don't make changes to both and then send them out again, like keep one as your control and keep one as your test. And then keep going back on whichever one performed better. Make that your new control and then send out your new test. And then you can continue to see what worked and what didn't and you can keep those straight.
Breanna:Yeah, that's essential for a great experiment.
Amy:As someone who has done it the wrong way before and been like, wait, I don't know.
Breanna:We can get, we can get a little too excited with playing and imagining.
Amy:Yes, we can. But like Vince and I always say there's no such thing as a mistake. There is just success and finding the incorrect way to do something.
Breanna:I like that.
Amy:Well, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today, Bre, I think you did a fabulous job. And it wasn't as bad as you were expecting. Was it?
Breanna:No, not at all.
Amy:Will you do this again?
Breanna:I will. First nerves.
Amy:Yeah, it's just first time jitters. It's fine. Now you have popped your podcast cherry, am I allowed to say pop your podcast cherry?
Breanna:I think so; I'm gonna let it pass.
Amy:We'll let it pass. So I so I'm super excited to have you on here in the future. And you can have it with our real podcast host when she's back. I think you only have to put up with me as the host for maybe one or two more episodes, and then Jess comes back and joins us and we're so excited to have her back. We've missed her. But thank you for joining in and we will see you next time and Bre, thank you again just so so much.
Breanna:Thanks again for having me and for the opportunity.
Amy:All right, bye.
Breanna:Bye.
Jess:Thank you all for tuning in this week. We hope this theory is relative to your marketing needs. Make sure you subscribe to get notified of our latest episodes.