Blogs vs. E-mails

Posted on 04. Apr, 2008 by Dave in Business

In the early days of internet marketing, everyone was talking about the importance of e-mail marketing and e-zines to build brand recognition and customer loyalty. But today, blogs seem to be the new buzzword. This phenomenon is not recent as we have been hearing about the benefits of blogs for a few years now. Yet, I will delve into this topic again because the benefits of blogs need to be reemphasized. In addition, it would be a good idea to compare the effectiveness of blogs with e-mail marketing and ezines.

So let’s start with its definition, blog is short for the word “web log”; that is, it is a website wherein entries are displayed in a reverse chronological order. Typically, content management systems can notify blog subscribers about new posts through RSS feeds. On the other hand, e-mail campaigns rely on third-party Email Marketing Service (EMS). Below are the comparison and contrasts between e-mail marketing and blogs:

Ease of Publication

Blogs are apparently easier and faster to publish compared to newsletters because the blog platform enables the user to write and immediately publish the content into the blog. Meanwhile, e-mail newsletters are not automatic because they need to be carefully written, laid out attractively using HTML, and copied to the web interface on the EMS website. It will then be scheduled for distribution.

Cost

Popular blog platforms including WordPress.com, WordPress.org, and Blogger.com are free. But it is almost impossible to find an EMS provider who will give free services so email marketers need to pay a certain fee based on the number of emails they sent out or the fee can also be based on the quantity of the mailing list.

Readership

Readership in blogs can be measured by the number of unique visitors on the blog and by the number of RSS feed subscribers. On the other hand, readership in e-mail campaigns is measured by the number of subscribers, open rate, and inbox delivery rate.

Subscriber List

Probably the greatest difference between a blog and an e-mail newsletter is its approach to reaching their visitors. E-mail newsletters have a list of e-mail addresses and these sometimes even include the name and location of the readers. Meanwhile, bloggers have no such list so they cannot effectively reach out to their visitors unless the visitors make the move to visit the blog themselves.

Which strategy will work best for you? No one can answer that better than you because both e-mail newsletters and blogs can be highly effective depending on how the internet marketer makes use of it.