Using Newsletter Influencers to Expand Your Business

Many agencies and digital tools reach the point where they decide that one method of grooming future customers could be through newsletters as goals are set and growth plans are discussed.

There are certainly valid reasons for this, as there are numerous outstanding digital marketing newsletters to subscribe to. What is the plan, though?

What is the purpose of some of these newsletters? It's not enough to send out a steady stream of business blog posts that appear to be written by virtual assistants with little experience in the field. That isn't going to work.

What kind of material is required?

The creative used, as with any medium, is entirely dependent on the target audience and the psychological triggers that audience will respond to. First, figure out who you're going after. This isn't too difficult for most digital agencies and tools, and I can get away with it because I'm usually targeting the same buyer personas, such as Digital Agency Network readers. Let's identify the buyer persona as an owner or executive level in (or overseeing) the marketing function for simplicity's sake.

What is the buyer's requirement? It's the same answer I give to the majority of SEO questions: it depends. If your buyer persona is more of an end user, the content in your newsletter should be geared toward them, like Aleyda Solis's #SEOFOMO and Kevin Indig's Growth Memo.

The target audience, on the other hand, is in charge of these tasks. What is important to them? They don't have time to try to understand the nuances of most technical bits, so they need a wider overview of the data that can be delegated or acted on at a higher level to increase revenue, cut costs, save time, or concentrate.

Something like Saijo George’s TL;DR Marketing comes to mind for article summarization. For execs in the influencer niche, we all look forward to reading Friday’s summary of influencer news by Influence Weekly.

So, why should digital agencies start a newsletter?

There’s an importance of email marketing even for those agencies that don’t offer email marketing as a service. When done correctly, email allows for multiple touch points, but more importantly allows an agency to establish itself as an expert voice.

Further, email is a marketing channel that is considerably less volatile when compared to organic search and paid social, as most marketers can attest to.

Email is also an easy funnel entry point that is near frictionless. So long as you’re providing value in the newsletter in exchange for the email, funnel churn can be managed and allows for a simple contact mechanism when it’s time to move a prospect closer to purchase.

Another reason to incorporate a newsletter marketing strategy has to do with paid search and social; all these emails can be used as a primer for your retargeting and lookalike audiences.

The final reason is cost. Mailchimp, SendGrid, and most email platforms are dirt cheap when compared to other acquisition channels, making the barrier to entry close to nonexistent for even the most bootstrapped digital agencies.

How does one become an expert to the point where people will subscribe?

There are no shortcuts to becoming an expert. It requires thousands of hours of practice, patience, and perseverance to become viewed as a top tier influencer in your field.

Allow your solutions team to use the newsletter subscribers for one-time customised offerings that are heavily targeted to their potential needs once you've established yourself as an expert. Don't mass email your list with a generic offer and expect them to respond, as perceived expertise can be lost as a result of such errors.

Isn't it great to be able to increase your perceived knowledge faster than the usual 10,000-hour guideline?

I was "new" to the field when building Intellifluence, despite having over 20 years of experience in the trenches of organic search, email, paid, and content marketing. I needed to write a book before receiving callbacks from the biggest CPGs. The doors began to open as soon as I began receiving co-citations.

When it comes to becoming an expert and being perceived as such by potential clients, one approach that consistently works is to leech off of other experts through co-citations across various mediums. Newsletters are no exception; you'll need to enlist the help of authoritative influencers in order to succeed.

What does it mean to be an authoritative newsletter influencer?

Influencers can be classified into three categories in the world of influencer marketing: peer-level micro-influencers, aspirational or celebrity influencers, and expert-level authoritative influencers. As the names suggest, aspirational influencers are public figures with large but generalised audiences; peers are smaller audiences but can be very successful when used in groups; and authorities are the experts you're looking for.

We've all heard of internet experts. It can be difficult to get them to sign up for your newsletter when you're first starting out, so as an ego boost, add content they've created elsewhere.

To increase your effectiveness while also increasing your list, send a copy of the curated newsletter to the experts in question and ask if you can advertise on their list because you've gotten so much value from them that you think their audience would be a good fit for what you're working on.

Later on, as your relationships develop, you can use an authoritative YouTube strategy to court these influencers, combining it with co-cited blog posts on authoritative publications like Digital Agency Network to further establish yourself.

As your co-cited content becomes more abundant, pay for its inclusion in any other related newsletters that will take your money as a final step in the process.

Once you and your agency have established a reputation as experts, other newsletter owners will be able to introduce your product and content, explain how they use it, and then include a special offer for the newsletter audience that ties back to your core offering.

Newsletter marketing is effective, and it's even better when you pair it with the right authoritative influencers.