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The Pros (and a few cons) of Using e-Newsletters

This is part two of a four part series written to help your non-profit organization deliver your newsletter electronically. In part one I outlined a couple of the reasons non-profits cite for not going electronic and gave my thoughts on why those reasons are full of holes. In this article I’ll provide a list of pros and cons for e-newsletters and ask you to provide other reasons why you think you should or shouldn’t make the swtich.

The Pros of Using e-Newsletters

• Cost - The cost to start delivering your newsletter electronically is absolutely free. If you happen to be one of the lucky few organizations that can make a complete switch and deliver your newsletter only electronically, then the cost savings are easy to calculate. At a conservative $0.25 per piece, a 1,000 piece newsletter costs $250 every time you send it out. The e-newsletter costs the same price whether you send it to 1 or 100,000 people and it’s entirely possible that the price is $0. Free is good for its own sake, but in this case, free allows you to serve more people according to the mission of your organization. Eliminating a quarterly newsletter at $250 per quarter means returning $1000 to your annual programming budget. That’s a “pro” if I’ve ever seen one.
• Specific Delivery Time - e-Newsletter software allows you to deliver your mail on a specific time of day, every single time. This specificity allows you to target constituents when they are most likely to take action. Sometimes the action you want them to take is just reading the newsletter. Sometimes it is a request for funding a special project. Different days of the week and times of day result in different responses. Because of the instant nature of email delivery, your messages get there when you say so - not when the post office says so.
• Tracking - When you send out a paper newsletter, do you know how many subscribers actually open it? Of course not! Paper newsletters provide no way to track if the newsletter ever makes it to the mailbox, much less if the newsletter is read or not. By sending newsletters electronically, you give your organization the opportunity to track things like delivery success, open rates (i.e. was the email opened?), and even which articles were read. Tracking opens the door to testing which allows your organization to deliver targeted messages to your subscribers.
• Turnaround - Delivering a “Special Bulletin” in paper form can take days or even weeks. If your organization is in need of quick action on the part of your subscribers, time is of the essence. A database of electronic newsletter subscribers allows you to get your special bulletin out to hundreds, thousands, or more constituents in minutes (hours, at most).
• Call to Action - Sure, paper newsletters can, and should, solicit a call to action, but doing so requires extra, unconnected steps on behalf of the reader. For example, if I read your newsletter and you ask me to make a donation. I have to (at least) write a check, address an envelope (unless you provide one at your cost), and put it in the mail. Three days later you get the money. An e-Newsletter allows you to solicit action from the reader and provides a very simple means for following through. My favorite call to action in an e-Newsletter? “Send this newsletter to a friend.”
• It’s Green - This should be reason enough if your non-profit is one that serves environmental causes. Sure, running computers and servers takes energy but no one can argue that sending an e-Newsletter to even 10 subscribers costs as much environmentally as sending a paper version. The more you send, the greener it gets!
• Passive Signups - Unlike a paper newsletter, your e-Newsletter subscriber list can grow 24/7/365. The user enters all of his or her own contact information without the help of a staff member and can subscribe (or unsubscribe) at any time. Your list will grow without any effort on the part of your organization.

The Cons of Using e-Newsletters

• Spam Filters - Spammers make everyone’s life a little more difficult. Thanks to spammers email providers have implemented spam filters to try to block some of the unwanted messages from making it to our inboxes. This has the potential to cause problems for those who want to send e-Newsletters - your messages could be quarantined before the subscriber ever saw them. Thankfully, there are ways to prevent your newsletter from being marked as spam. While the details are a bit too, um . . . detailed, for this article I’ll address it at a later date. If you’d like to see such an article, just say so in the comments below.
• Formatting - If you’re absolutely crazy about your design for your printed newsletter and refuse to give it up, an e-Newsletter is probably not for you. While a good designer can match your organizations brand with a quality e-Newsletter template, even the best consultants (wink) can’t decide what shows up on a subscriber’s screen. I typically recommend sending emails in text-only format and embedding links in the emails that direct readers to a website where I can track their reading habits, control the design, and deliver specific, content-related, calls to action.
• Connectedness of Your List - Before you invest time into making the switch, you should have a good idea of how many of your subscribers are connected. If the base of your support isn’t connected to the internet, then developing an e-Newsletter isn’t going to be a good use of your time. Be careful not to make assumptions about the connectedness of your list, though. You’d be surprised how many people are online these days.

So, what did I forget? Are there reasons you can think of that it makes sense (or doesn’t) for your organization to deliver newsletters electronically? I want to hear your thoughts! Say what’s on your mind in the comments below.