Why I got rid of my e-newsletter

I recently got rid of my e-newsletter, as a result of deciding that continuing to use it seemed to be more about ritual and less about actually doing something productive for my business. Conventional emarketing wisdom would suggest that getting rid of my e-newsletter is a mistake and that I should instead try to reinvigorate it with better catchy titles that will get my readers to open the e-newsletter and read the content, as well as hopefully decide to buy a service or product from me. I realize this approach works for some businesses, but I’ve also realized it doesn’t necessarily work for my business and that I need to tailor my marketing toward what does work.

How often are businesses encouraged to take a critical look at what they are doing and question whether it really works or is just a task they do, because other people who it does work for swear it’ll eventually work for them? I recognize that e-newsletters work for some businesses, but I also recognize it doesn’t work for my business. Now there could be a variety of reasons for that, which involve what I’m doing or not doing with the e-newsletter, but I also realized that holding onto an activity because someone else does it and says it work isn’t the best reason to do it.

This is also prompted by recently choosing to get rid of my subscriptions to over 90% of the newsletters I have been subscribed to (not all of them by any choice of my own). Even in the cases, where I did subscribe to the newsletter, I’ve found myself less inclined to read them due to time constraints or other issues. Instead I found that I was replacing them with subscriptions to RSS feeds for blogs.

I think while e-newsletters will continue to work for a while, they’ll eventually be replaced by blogs completely, as businesses and people recognize the value of using blogs to share information and qualify people who choose to opt-in. So I’m choosing to focus on my blogs instead of e-newsletters, for sharing information, ideas, and attracting business.