Say it With Me: No More Newsletters

I’ve decided to take a forward-thinking track and abandon publishing my monthly newsletter, Technology Reflections. Well, okay, why?

Primarily, I’ve found that I don’t have the time to keep up with the other forms of social media that I’m engaged in and the newsletter. I just haven’t been able to keep up with the schedule. Secondly, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that consumers have reached a saturation point with email. Too much email simply turns people off and I didn’t want to continue contributing to the problem. Third, too much broadcasting could lead to my domain being blacklisted and I didn’t want to encourage that. Four, developing content for both the newsletter and my website has proven fairly tedious.

I suppose that – if I were to really think strategically about this decision – email newsletters were useful in an age without Twitter and RSS feeds, where one needed to use a form of direct marketing to stay in touch with your clients and remind them of your brand. Given the evolution of the technology and the self-service approach to feeds (consumers can choose what information service they wish to subscribe to), I think the use of the newsletter has become a bit tired. I want to encourage students and clients to stay in touch with me but not at the expense of their mail filter or their time. That’s what this social media stuff is all about.

I think that if I were to advise anyone on the use of direct mail/email correspondence, I’d try to rethink that mode of communication and keep it reserved for only the most critical interactions like account notices or payment schedules, whereas everything else can be voluntarily subscribed to. Not only will this reduce the clutter in the inbox for the consumer, but, reduce traffic loads on mail servers, and, prevent the accidental blacklisting of the transmitting domain.

So, I think I’m going to change-up my strategy here and discontinue the newsletter. Archives are still available here.

Thanks yall.

R

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