Newsletters, RIP.

I realized in the last month that I have been a part of phasing out three different industry newsletters - meaning written, designed, printed, mailed via the USPS.    The reason?  Almost all entirely budget related.  Revenues aren’t supporting the traditional delivery of news within key interest and association groups.

This comes as no surprise this week when our own Columbus Dispatch pared down its paper, again.  They eliminated most of the lighthearted features that gave the eye something easier to read after the litany of stories that were mainly man-commits-crime-against woman or state-has-no-tax-revenue-to-pay-for-services.

But, in the case of my association-based clients, there is still organizational news to be shared such as issue advocacy alerts, core goals and mission progress, staff and board changes, fund raising success and more.   We have migrated these groups to online strategies, all of which center around the collection of content in a central hub, fueled largely by a blog platform (although not always called a blog).   This allows flexibility for promotion of that content through email, stand-alone links, feeds into various social media applications and clearly, budget efficiency.  Members are migrated, too, in their behavior to relying on these channels to receive news.  Both the “push” and “pull” of the information are evaluated through web analytics, member surveys and of course, comments and anecdotal dialogue.

These strategies may be cheaper than the traditional printed delivery system, but they still take resources.  As I have liked to say in my nearly 20-years in PR and PR Marketing, our work may be cheaper, but it isn’t free.