With the number of Internet users worldwide approaching two billion, electronic newsletters have become a necessity for every type of business as one of the most effective mediums for keeping in contact with clients and attracting new prospects. Regular e-contact can be a vital marketing strategy, but publishing a periodic newsletter does a whole lot more to help your company to succeed. Let’s look at just a few of the ways that an email newsletter can help you to grow your business.

Newsletters can be an extremely effective way to enhance your company’s brand image. Branding is all about consistency, and your newsletter needs to be every bit as consistent in format as it is in frequency. Branding is also about making everyone aware of what you do, and regular newsletters do that by helping you to stay in the minds of your database. They are more likely to think of you as your email arrives in their in-box at regular intervals. Keep in mind that this is just as important for your existing clients as it is for your prospects. Regular personalized contact not only gives you the opportunity to educate your clients about products or services that they might not know about; it also helps to reinforce your relationship with them.

Business relationships don’t just happen overnight; building trust and credibility must be earned over a long period of time. Regular contact through email and print newsletters can be one of the easiest ways to build and maintain that trust. Better still, it helps people to remember you and pass on information about your company to others. As many as 70% of people claim that referrals are a major factor in making purchase decisions, so don’t miss out!

Proper use of an email newsletter can also help to establish you as an authority in your industry as you convey your expertise to your audience. There are several ways to do this, including publishing testimonials, recognizing awards and achievements that you have earned and including case studies that demonstrate how you can offer a solution to your readers’ needs. You can also write "expert" articles for your own newsletter and then submit the same articles to other Internet sites that link back to your website. There is nothing like being on the first page of Google results to reinforce your standing as an industry leader.

Remember that the main purpose of a newsletter, as the name implies, is to provide interesting and useful news to the reader. If you want your newsletter to be a relationship builder, don’t let it become an advertisement! That’s what brochures and other publications are for. Newsletter marketing is really a two-step process. First and foremost, build trust in your company, and then offer the products and services that satisfy a need and are worthy of referral or recommendation.

Unlike print copies, email newsletters are usually interactive. As your message is received by your audience, they have the opportunity to connect back to your website, blog, social media profiles or any other link. When links connect back to pages embedded in your website (and not just the home page), this can also increase your site’s search engine rankings, which translates to more traffic directed to your website. Readers often tend to forward interesting and enticing newsletters to their contacts. Your message can end up anywhere, and in the in-box of people you’ve never met.

A good email service will also allow you to track the effectiveness of your newsletter, providing statistics concerning contact activity, bounces, un-subscribers and other tracking results. The data that you collect can help you to refine and re-purpose your marketing approach based on your past successes and challenges.

There are plenty of other advantages to publishing a monthly newsletter, including the fact that email newsletters are cost-effective, allowing you to communicate frequently with a highly specific and "captive" audience. Best of all, you are helping other people, both when you share your knowledge with them AND when you recommend other businesses to them.

Every business owner should be sending a regular email newsletter, both as a first rate marketing tool and as a proven method for turning prospects into clients. If you are both consistent and persistent, the time and effort that you invest to organize and produce a regular newsletter may prove to be one of the best ways to add value and profit to your business.