e-Newsletters… Dying or Just in Need of a New Touch?

I had a great exchange with Kyle Lacy regarding a comment at the end of his blog post on things to remember when blogging. It was a great post, focusing on Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice to build content and community. Kyle ended with this line:

If you care more about your bottom line than helping and joining the COMMUNITY behind your brand… Go ahead and send out an e-newsletter. Don’t waste your time with a blog.

You can see the whole of my response and our back and forth in the comments on Kyle’s blog post, but my general point was that I am not sure e-newsletters are dead, or that they should be.

I mentioned Chris Brogan’s successful use of an e-newsletter in conjunction with his blog. Chris does an amazing job of integrating his e-newsletter with other channels so that the newsletter has a real value to his readers when it arrives and adds to the content that’s on his blog without repeating it. Maybe Chris is an exception, but he shouldn’t be!

Especially for nonprofits, when we are sometimes slower to adopt new technology and use the tools we have for a longer time, we have to find ways to make what we have work, to make it exciting and to make it serve our mission.

I realize that a newsletter will never build a conversation the way a blog or lifestreaming tool or other shiny 2.0 tool can, but it can still deliver valuable content right? If you are delivering value to your volunteers, advocates or donors by giving them news and information that they care about or tools that they can use, isn’t this a strong foundation for community-building?

What do you think?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 9:46 pm and is filed under marketing, media, nonprofit technology, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “e-Newsletters… Dying or Just in Need of a New Touch?”

  1. Kyle Lacy Says:
    August 25, 2008 at 9:50 pm

    Erin: You know what I think. :-)

    You can deliver content with any type of information medium. The only difference is whether or not you decide to create a conversation.

    Push and Pull marketing.

    Ps: Did you see the new FriendFeed Beta? beta.friendfeed.com

  2. firestar9s Says:
    August 25, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    Kyle- Thanks for stopping by!

    Agreed- there is a lot of power in the hands of the deliverer. I think we’ve finaly reached consensus. :)

    - Haven’t seen it- will check it out! Thanks again!

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