Professional Service Firms & Email Newsletters: Is Low-Value Content Inevitable?

The motivation behind an email newsletter is a positive thing.

It indicates a firm’s understanding that knowledge transfer is a key factor in selling professional services, newly acquired knowledge needs to be published regularly to continually add value, and that email is an effective tool to deliver this information to existing clients and prospects.

Yet, despite the fact that all of these concepts are correct, we have found that the email newsletter is not the ideal method of execution for the professional service firm. After numerous client observations, patterns have emerged that show the continual production of a newsletter not only inevitably results in low-value content, but receives relatively poor returns in terms of conversion and revenue.

The first step in understanding this phenomenon, is understanding that the professional service firm:

1. Relies on the transfer of valuable knowledge to sell professional services
2. Does not have unlimited access to their professional’s time for non-billable tasks
3. Cannot be wasteful with qualified leads that could result in large profitable contracts

The finite resources of a typical professional service firm, compounded with the high-value potential of qualified leads, demand an approach that is efficient and targeted.

So, why does the newsletter typically fall short?

The primary reason lies in the high-frequency production schedule of the average email newsletter. With quarterly, monthly, or even biweekly deadlines, professionals are hard pressed to consistently produce knowledge-rich content. A dichotomy arises that motivates professionals to publish and document “just because it’s October”, rather than when valuable insights are discovered.

The newsletter methodology drives the firm to become a virtual newspaper, rather than a think-tank. At the end of the day when a cost/benefit analysis is performed, the considerable drain on resources to maintain a newsletter timetable, are not justified by the caliber of content and intellectual capital produced.

Secondly, the sheer quantity of information within an average email newsletter guarantees the delivery of low-value information.

Article Author: Grant L. Aldrich

Grant Aldrich is the editor of the Professional Services Marketing blog. He has 6 years of internet marketing experience, and is Director of Client Services for Leadtank, Inc. A company that specializes in Internet Lead Generation.

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