EMAIL VERSUS NEWSLETTERS
Marketing Magazine
18/02/02

Each month, resort operator Intrawest blasts an e-mail to thousands of its potential customers. The content of the e-mail doesn't directly promote one of its properties, which include Whistler/Blackcomb in B.C., Mont Tremblant in Quebec and Blue Mountain in Ontario. Rather, it contains general information about what is happening at these and its other resorts.

Vancouver-based Intrawest is just one of an increasing number of marketers that maintain a dialogue with customers via e-mail newsletters. Unlike e-mail campaigns and flyers, newsletters aim to provide useful information "and do not contain a sales pitch," says Hugh Furneaux, president of interactive firm Ariad Communications in Toronto, which is in the midst of creating a newsletter program for TD Canada Trust.

Furneaux says he has seen open rates on e-mail newsletters as high as 62%. That makes the return on investment particularly attractive, considering that the ballpark cost of an English-language e-mail newsletter campaign, including creative and deployment, is just $10,000, he says.

Roman Bodnarchuk, president and CEO of Toronto-based relationship-marketing firm N5R, says it's important for newsletters to be HTML-based. He says such newsletters are 350 times as likely to be opened and, unlike text messages, can be tracked down to the links subscribers are clicking.

This allowed Intrawest, an N5R client, to tailor an e-mail promoting resort sales directly to those addresses that had previously shown an interest. "Based on what links they click on the newsletter, we can then send very specific e-mails," says Bodnarchuk.

Research from Vancouver-based Ispos-Reid indicates that 79% of online Canadians subscribe to at least one newsletter and, on average, they are registered for five. Of those who have registered, the top three subject matters are news and information (54%), entertainment (38%) and travel (26%).