The email newsletter. One of the classic email marketing strategies that has withstood the test of time.

Find a key point to highlight, pull in a few other things to feature in the less-prominent content blocks below the hero, and wrap it all up with an events calendar of group of photos. I don’t even have to show you a screenshot for you to imagine dozens – if not hundreds – of emails you’ve seen that follow that same pattern.

But there are a few things I want you to think about.

#1) Cross Channel
First, just like I’ve challenge you to consider how you can give social media content more legs on email, why would we limit such a nice collection of cool stuff just to email?

#2) Format
But if you’re going to share that stuff, the ideal way is likely not a link to an 600px-wide email template with none of the stuff – JS, video, etc. – you’d traditionally use on your website to make an engaging experience.

#3) Time to Create
And when you consider how long it takes to create such a block of content in a way that renders well across dozens of inboxes and also looks nice within the constraints of email-specific HTML?

You might find yourself thinking what I often do…

Non-Email Newsletters

Newsletters as a concept are great, but I think it’s time to rethink what a newsletter is and, more importantly, where it lives. Ask yourself:

• What if my newsletter lived on my website and I could create it using our CRM?
• What if social posts and emails about the newsletter were simply links to that page?
• What more could I do with that newsletter if I wasn’t constrained by email HTML?

And in the 30-seconds it took you to read and consider those questions, you’ve probably got a couple images in your head that are kind of intriguing. I’m not saying those images are the future of email, but I am saying that is where newsletters could be headed.

Clicks

In that sense, the performance of your email [to send a link to a] newsletter would be judged by clicks (which aligns with what we talked about yesterday), it’d be something that would be perfect for sharing on social media, and would be a perfect candidate for driving traffic to from other promotional blocks or areas on your website.

And when you want to run that summer reengagement campaign? Well, knowing that your emails were designed to be clicked rather than just opened will make it easier and more accurate to build those disengaged segments around click actvitiy instead of open activity.

Let’s be clear, newsletters are great. But these changes might just give them a much needed kick of creativity that makes them more useful, and effective, than ever.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.