NEWSLETTERS 📧❤️ ARE THE NEW BLACK!

[Lovewell]

Hi! There have been lots of discussions on less and less socials personally and for businesses and going back to 🥁🥁🥁🥁 drum roll please… NEWSLETTERS! 

Sent out our first really intentionally one this week. We’ve done them in the past but not all the time. We now want to do them monthly! 

Do you send newsletters for your business? 

Do you read a newsletter when it shows up in your inbox? 

What types do you send v what do you actually like to read?

Is it a MUST to add a coupon? 

If you don’t send them- why not? Is something else more effective? 

Can’t wait to hear from you all! 
you are loved. 

[Minion]

I used to send them out about once a month, but I haven't done so in over a year.  My plan is to get back into that toward the end of the year.  Just waiting to finish finalizing new things with the business.   I'm a fan of newsletters as long as I don't get spammed by them.  If a company sends me one more than 2x a week, sorry but I'm unsubscribing. 

I like to send ones that are more on the informative type (pros/cons the goods and bad).  I don't know know everything but I' feel like I've been doing this long enough that I know enough of what works and what doesn't .  I don't think (nor believe) that a coupon is always necessary.  I know some companies are always sending out coupons for a certain service or product so much that it makes me think, why not just list it at that price since its always "on sale".

[Lovewell]

All great points! 

We send coupons few and far between only because we already have a loyalty program that has its perks. 

Two times a week would be insane to me! Not only to receive but to have to create those 😂 

Hope yours go well! I tried to add fun photos of the crew and customers so people have another way of feeling connected to us. 

[Minion]

I was actually thinking of this post today.  IN the last id say 4-5 months, i have received a large uptick from other larger companies sending out a marketing type email/newsletter.  Some of these companies I haven't purchased something from in years.  It seemed odd, but I'm thinking more companies maybe going back to that instead of putting it all into social. 

[Lovewell]

Oooo. YES. Which could be a good or bad thing for us 😂 if ours get lost in the many other newsletters coming through. 

[doc_choc]

Newsletters we find really work for us. We think its because you have genuinely engaged followers of the business who are motivated to interact with your business. Frequency of engagement we limit, not sure how many per week or month should be sent to retain and maximize engagement but we try not to overdose our subscribers. We have a blend of informative and sales orientated newsletters depending on the season and occasional marketing coupon. Try not to send out newsletters for the sake of engagement unless we have something worth talking about. I would like to try text marketing, its not landed this side of the pond to date. Not sure a newsletter may be more visually creative with the engagement. I'm sure there is a place for both forms or may be a blend of the two perhaps targeting different audiences within business.

[Minion]

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@doc_choc wrote:

Newsletters we find really work for us. We think its because you have genuinely engaged followers of the business who are motivated to interact with your business. Frequency of engagement we limit, not sure how many per week or month should be sent to retain and maximize engagement but we try not to overdose our subscribers. We have a blend of informative and sales orientated newsletters depending on the season and occasional marketing coupon. Try not to send out newsletters for the sake of engagement unless we have something worth talking about. I would like to try text marketing, its not landed this side of the pond to date. Not sure a newsletter may be more visually creative with the engagement. I'm sure there is a place for both forms or may be a blend of the two perhaps targeting different audiences within business.

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Do you use Square Email Marketing for your newsletters or a different platform right now?  I'm hoping next year to be able to utilize the text marketing but ONLY for a quick simply yearly reminder in May.  The hard part of that is getting the customer to physically sign up for that, but that is where the email will come into play as long as I have their email.   

[doc_choc]

We are using the Square Marketing. Its good and does the job, but as always I think there is so much more functionality that could be applied but it takes things into the next level of marketing. But happy to have something that does the job pretty well.

Signups are a challenge, I would like to see more thought in how the Square system can encourage people to signup, whether that be through better communication and ease input at the POS/Register perhaps an employee prompts/popups before completion of checkout. Better signup through the online, the current links really are not as good as the old Weebly forms and more customizable signup pages and forms, we need to be able to tailor more brand essence or business feel in to the visual aspect and wording on the forms and signup links. Signup incentives e.g. loyalty points for example so a closer more joined up thinking between loyalty and marketing could help boost signups.

Is there something more that could be done with cross promotional, upselling and crosselling via the newsletters??

With email you know you have an engaged customer base, I find them more loyal, they repeat buy when compared with SM marketing for example, the followers can be a little fickle, there one day gone the next. Each has their merits I'm sure.

If text marketing arrives here I think it would have a place in our business for the takeout food product side, but with newsletters leading the way with our retail product side. I would like to take both and play more with them.

Hope there is much more to come in the pipeline for Square Marketing and Loyalty. 😁

[Lovewell]

Love the idea of loyalty points for signing up! 

[Minion]

Yeah I haven't used Squares for newsletters yet.  I used to use one through Wordpress some time ago.  I wish there was slightly more customization with Squares Email Marketing, but I don't want to see it overcrowded either.  I like to keep it simple and basic but maybe with a bit more options baked into it..

[Lovewell]

I think for us it’s really easy to get info because we have a loyalty program so people don’t mind at all to share their email.

[Lovewell]

I love how visually creative newsletters are! That’s sort of why we love Instagram for our business. So the newsletter was fun to make super “cute” and felt it represented our brand well!

[TheRealChipA]

As you already know, that's my plan.  My Facebook page is history, as well as the Instagram page.  I have QR codes at the service windows for folks to sign up for our text message marketing as well as our newsletters.  We are handling things through Square Marketing as well.  I just started using the Marketing Dashboard to set up automations that seem geared to my business model.

Anyway, I hadn't realized how lazy social media had made me as far as marketing goes.  I had unwittingly developed that "I built it so they will come" mentality there.  It turns out that customers on my lists actually read what we send them and don't just respond to the headlines, missing the good stuff.  I'm preaching to the converted instead of shouting from the mountaintop and hoping someone hears,  I believe that's more effective and it's definitely more intimate.

Anyway, it's got me thinking about another angle -- turning my loyal customers into brand ambassadors.  I've started looking at Ice Cream Social (a third-party app) to help me with that.  I think that if I set it up correctly, I can make my customers my biggest advertisers by rewarding them for sharing information about us that leads to new customers.  It's definitely intriguing.

One more thing.  I am signed up to receive newsletters from every business in the neighborhoods around my business.  It helps me keep up with their happenings and, honestly, gives me ideas.  I'm even on newsletter lists for the neighborhood associations for the same reason.  If one hits my box that is either local or a business I care about, it gets read.  If not, I'm hitting the unsubscribe button pretty regularly.  For myself, I send maybe two a month and, no, I do not include a coupon every time.  In my mind, coupons can be cheapened (and give the impression that my prices are too high to begin with) if I am passing them out like sprinkles.  LOL

[Lovewell]

Yes!! I love that. I’m gonna go through and try and subscribe to some local ones as

well. What a great idea. 

Great insights. 

[ChickenRacer]

This is something I really want/need to do with my product, on the brand ambassador point. My best advertising is word of mouth, but it'd be great to officialise it. They can hand out flyers etc.

[Doran]

I've started using Newsletters more too.  It seems more personal than IG and I find people engage with it more.  I love the Square reports after that show how productive it was.  It helps encourage me to keep with it versus social media that I'm not sure it is really doing anything. 

[TheRealChipA]

@Doran For sure, re: SM.  Besides I'm pretty sure I can sleep at night not wondering what troll is going to blast me for "pandering to terrorist vegans," like a group of trolls did a few months ago when I introduced a new line of oat-based vegan soft serve products.  You would have thought I was burning flags in their front yards!  Newsletters let me preach to the converted and let them spread the good news to others for me.  What's not to like about that? LOL

[Doran]

Yes. Exactly. My 2026 goal is to grow my email list for this reason.  So much easier to avoid the ugliness of online.  

[Lovewell]

Beautiful! Love this so much. Love that we’re all pretty much on the same page with all of this. 

[Lovewell]

Whoever these people were couldn’t even step foot into Southern California 🤣 you are expected to have vegan, GF, and dairy free Options. 

[Minion]

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@TheRealChipA wrote:

@Doran For sure, re: SM.  Besides I'm pretty sure I can sleep at night not wondering what troll is going to blast me for "pandering to terrorist vegans," like a group of trolls did a few months ago when I introduced a new line of oat-based vegan soft serve products.  You would have thought I was burning flags in their front yards!  Newsletters let me preach to the converted and let them spread the good news to others for me.  What's not to like about that? LOL

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I feel like that is people who clearly have too much extra time on their hands.  I mean I can go to places and see something that I would never eat/buy/try but I'm pretty simple and just don't do it. It takes too much energy for me to throw a fit when I can simply just keep going on with my day haha.