Last week a prospective customer in India wanted to know whether he should have email newsletters (or webletters) as a part of his B2B marketing mix. I answered him with a question – “what do you want to achieve with an email newsletter?” And then a series of questions:

1. Is it to bring in new customers, generate leads?
2. Establish expertise or build thought leadership? So customers will flock to you when they are in the right stage in their buying cycle.
3. Or just to educate your prospects and customers? More of a product manual? Where your solutions replace the old or fit better into their existing usage?
4. Engage with various stakeholders through a touch-point communication on a continual basis?
5. Or to keep the lead nurturing momentum with prospects through a long sales cycle process?
6. Prop up offline sales or on-the-field sales activities?
7. Create or enhance brand awareness through digital marketing in your defined target markets?
8. Pulling traffic to your website or solutions pages?
9. Or just for fun? Or because your competitors are doing it?

Email newsletters can possibly achieve many of the above goals simultaneously. Also, newsletters can address multiple audiences with differing goals and objectives.

At the end of it all I managed to get the prospect shoot a question back at me (probably he was waiting to get even): “What time can we meet tomorrow morning?”