A strange thing has been happening to newsletters online.
They have been turning into either a) promotional emails or b) web pages delivered by email.
I’m sure you know what I mean. Go back a couple of years and you could look forward to receiving your favorite newsletter in the knowledge that the newsletter itself would contain some great content…something you could read and enjoy, or learn from.
You could open the newsletter in your email and read it, from beginning to end. There were articles, reviews or just personal rant…well written and interesting.
In short, there was real value, right there in the newsletter.
These newsletters, where significant value lies in the body of the newsletter itself, are becoming harder and harder to find.
Instead, more and more companies and organizations are using their ‘newsletters’ as a promotional ploy to drive you to pages on their sites.
In one way, it’s understandable. As anyone with a newsletter knows, if you have one or two links to your site in the newsletter, your site traffic really spikes on the days you send out the newsletter.
When you see that, it’s tempting to optimize the entire newsletter