One, this is the age of integration. (For proof of that, see our new 2010 guide to choosing an ESP.) Just because you are doing one thing (blogging) doesn’t mean you should not do the other (email marketing). The more marketing channels you have, the better. Plus blogs and emails are delivered differently. A blog must be found by a reader, and then subscribed to, to be read. An email newsletter can be part of your email marketing program, sent to people already on your in-house email list. You can actively recruit email subscribers via a multitude of channels. And people are less likely to subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed than they are to your email newsletter. Using a blog in combination with an email newsletter simply increases your reach, and therefore your ROI.

Two, the one can refer to the other, so they support each other (and cut down on the amount of content needed). Let’s say you have an email marketing program, but you don’t do an email newsletter because you’re concerned about coming up with content and getting it pushed out on time every week or month. (And anything that takes more staff time admittedly impacts your email marketing ROI.) You can repurpose the content from your blog to create that email newsletter content. Pick a few of the best blogs from the last month and include a compelling sentence about each in the newsletter, linked to that blog. You will reach a different audience, your in-house email list, while driving traffic to your blog. Conversely, your blog can refer back to your email newsletter. That’s what we do at ClickMail. We publish a monthly email marketing newsletter, then summarize that month’s issue in a blog post, linking back to the newsletter now archived on our website.

Three, this is the age of choice for consumers, even if your audience is B2B. They can choose how to communicate with you, and how you can communicate with them. They might choose Facebook or Twitter or signing up for your emails or subscribing to your blog…or a combination of two or more of these channels. If they prefer email and you’re only offering a blog, you might lose the opportunity to build a relationship with them when they decide to simply skip it and you. And any lost opportunities mean a lower ROI.

Which leads to reason four, email as a relationship building tool. Blogging can’t replace email for relationship building. Nor can you effectively use blogging for specials and promotions, or even surveys! There are still certain types of content most appropriate to email. Just like you might miss out on a subscriber (i.e. prospect) if you only offer a blog, no newsletter, so might you miss out on marketing if you don’t have the email list and channel for certain types of messages.

Blogging and email: You need both for maximize email marketing ROI. And if you need help with the latter, you know where to go.

The publisher of Email Marketing Reports, Mark has put out another brilliant email marketing video. This time he takes on B2B marketing emails. He pretends to be one, an email newsletter, as he talks “at” you, the viewer/reader. With humor that’s painfully on target, he talks through the major sins B2B email marketing commits on a daily, if not hourly, basis:

• The email arrives 8 months later than expected
• The email isn’t targeted to the recipient
• The email is self-serving
• The email lacks any real personalization
• The email content is irrelevant
• The email is one-sided
• The email offer is unrelated to the recipient

There’s more, and every second is worth your attention. You’ll definitely snicker if not guffaw, and might cringe a little too, if you are in B2B email marketing.

This also might serve as ammunition to get upper management to listen when you’re trying to convince them the email marketing ROI would be higher if the email newsletter were better! So maybe this bit of viral video can be put to good use.

Watch Mark act the part of a B2B email newsletter by clicking here.

Looking around as the year came to a close, we as an email marketing vendor saw all kinds of advice online about tips for improving your email marketing. So we decided to take a different approach: We put together a list of the email marketing mistakes we most often see, and addressed those instead. Because sometimes you need to fix what’s broken before you start taking on new email marketing tools and tips!

• Email Marketing Reports 
• MediaPost’s EmailInsider (free registration)
• MarketingSherpa
• The Email Experience Council 
• Silverpop’s newsletter

Do you have a favorite email marketing blog or email newsletter to recommend? Let us know!

Content is what gets people to sign up for your email newsletters, it’s what makes them anticipate your e-newsletters, and it’s what keeps them subscribed to your email newsletters.

Offer better content than your competitor and over time you will win the subscribers…and the forwards and viral marketing too, if your email newsletter content is really good.

By posting your e-newsletter content on your Web site in an archive and you’ll win searches too, as potential subscribers who haven’t maybe haven’t even heard of you use Google, et al. to look for information…and find you! And then subscribe to your email newsletter.

Offer the best content, be the resource they rely on the most, and you’ll win trust, subscribers and even searches. And that all adds up to better email marketing ROI.