Using Newsletters to Drive White Paper Readers
For many organizations, using both newsletters and white papers has long been considered part of an effective online B2B marketing strategy.
While both are valuable, they are often treated as separate marketing tools, each with their own developmental resources, timelines, and content.
Now companies are revisiting how they use these marketing resources to achieve greater efficiencies with their current marketing budgets. For these organizations, the integration of their newsletter and white paper campaigns not only makes sense, but also can generate greater marketing opportunities than the gains realized by treating the two as independent marketing vehicles.
According to Marc Dube, the President and Founder of Proven Systems Corporation, a leading provider of corporate e-newsletter marketing and production services, there are several ways that corporations can integrate their newsletters and white paper programs to increase the appeal of their brand with both new and existing customers:
“A newsletter is a delivery mechanism. A white paper is a problem solver. If you have a white paper that never gets delivered, it creates no value. Newsletters provide your customers with a highly effective delivery mechanism that allows you to gain the maximum amount of exposure for your white papers.”
Proven Systems is their own best example for the effectiveness of using a newsletter to drive readers to a white paper:
“Recently, we did a redesign of our corporate newsletter, and posted our white paper predominantly on the front cover with a hyperlink to its website location. Now exposure to the white paper increases every time we send out our newsletter. When we looked at our website analytics, we noticed that our white paper was the second most frequently downloaded item right after our feature story!“
According to Dube, there are three ways that newsletters can increase the exposure for your white papers, and vice-versa. As a result, improve the effectiveness of your brand, product, service, or marketing strategy:
1. Proactive Public Exposure - To obtain to a white paper, a prospective customer must visit a website and download it. Newsletters can be one way to provide positive exposure for a white paper by gently reminding customers in a proactive fashion that it exists and where they can go to get it. When customers are proactively reminded of a white paper via the regular receipt of a newsletter, there is a greater likelihood that they will download it since that ‘one-on-one’ relationship has already been built.
2. Providing Repetitive Reminders - A white paper isn’t always downloaded when it appears either on a website or is referenced for the first time in a newsletter. Sometimes it takes two or three reminders before a reader will download that paper. Similar to any effective advertising strategy, frequency leads to action. The frequent notification of a white paper via a newsletter increases the exposure for that paper over a period of time. This increases the number of downloads for that paper over time.
3. Creating “Call-to-Action” and Follow Up – Traditionally, newsletters don’t provide a strong incentive to contact a sponsor. White papers that are featured in a newsletter can reinforce an existing brand image and improve the ‘call-to-action’, enabling the reader to contact the sponsor. Since white papers are often read and passed along to several decision makers within an organization, they can also increase the exposure and future subscriptions to the adjoining newsletter as well.
The old adage: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” seems to apply here. By integrating your newsletter and white paper strategies with a common focus, you can generate more effective results for your business. In this economy, getting greater effectiveness without increasing your total dollar outlay is a sound strategy that every business should consider.
You can read more information on how to make your newsletters and white papers work well together by visiting the Proven Systems website.
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