I know a lot of people are going to look at the title of this post and groan, but it’s about time I visited the world of e-mail newsletters.

A lot of companies use e-mail newsletters, but are their newsletters working for them? Here are a few of things to keep in mind:

Keep the content relevant: while news about the company is interesting, it may not be what the subscriber signed up for in the first place. If the content doesn’t make someone say, “I need to forward this to…” then it’s time to think about changing up the content.

Always ask them questions: surveys are the easiest way to gain feedback from your audience. Embedding a link to a simple survey (no more than four or five multiple-choice questions with one free response question) will help you gain feedback as to what the reader wants to hear about.

Quiz them about what is assumed knowledge: you’d be surprised how often this leads to interesting results. Giving a link to a 5-10 question quiz will help you find out what is base knowledge for your customer versus what you may need to educate them on before they’ll buy or become a client.

Remember, newsletters are another acquisition channel. You’re going to have fall-off, but you can help guide those that might continue on by finding out what makes them tick and telling them what they want to hear.

Here’s a question you have to ask yourself as a marketer:

Is my company a content publisher or a content distributer?

The reason you need to ask yourself this question is it will determine the direction of your online content strategy.  To clarify what I mean by publisher vs. distributer, here’s my basic definition.

Content Publishing: Producing web content such as video, podcasts, and blog posts that are original and made to be either entertaining or thought pieces.

Content Distribution: The sharing of content found on the internet or elsewhere that was created by outside individuals and is aggregated through your company’s blog, twitter feed, facebook fan page, or other broadcast medium.

The reason you need to think in these terms is it will help you identify who will be posting content and how that content will be generated.  And based on the content you provide, people will look to your company as either a thought leader, an innovator, or a creator based on how they perceive your position on the scale of publisher to distributer.