Both blogs and email newsletters are popular marketing tools: they create a relationship with your customers, enhance your credibility as an expert in your field, and they are less expensive than their print counterparts (snail mail and magazines). If you include a clear call to action or a special discount coupon, you can really increase sales. So which one should you use in your business? I prefer blogs, but I have listed the pros and cons of both below, along with some ways to enhance the value of your chosen marketing tool. You can, of course, use both in combination, which maximizes the benefits of each, and I made some notes about that below.

Benefits of Blogs

• Require more frequent updates. Old blogs don’t attract readers, whereas frequent updates encourage people to subscribe to your feed. However, even sporadic updates can greatly increase your site traffic.
• No address required. You don’t have to have someone’s email address to reach them, because most people will find your blog via internet searches.
• Enhance search engine rankings. Search engines tend to give precedence to blog articles in search results, since blog articles tend to be less biased and more up-to-date.
• Perception of blogs is generally helpful: you are offering something the user was searching for, when they are searching for it.
• Easy. HTML on a blog/webpage is easier to create and very flexible.
• Editing is possible. You can go back and edit the blog if you have any mistakes or updates, sometimes before they become embarrassing!
• Customers can comment. This can be good (if customers say good things) and bad (if customers say bad or incorrect things). However, you can disable or delete comments. Comments also aid search engine rankings, as they contain more keyword variations, even common misspellings of your keywords (a.k.a. typos).
• No ongoing costs once your blog is created, although the initial setup may be costly.
• Recommended software: WordPress.org installed on your site. If your blog is hosted on another site (e.g. Blogger, Blogspot, WordPress.com), it loses its value for your search engine rankings, and may not be worth the effort as a marketing tool.

Benefits of Email Newsletters

• Frequency can be low. You only must send an email newsletter as often as you have valuable content, even if that’s only once a year!
• You must have your customers’ email addresses, and comply with anti-spam regulations
• Does not affect search engine rankings. My biggest complaint about newsletters is that the content is only valuable when you send it, whereas blog articles continue to draw traffic to your site long after you write them. To combat this, always post a copy of your newsletter on your site – as a blog article, pdf file, or html page.
• Perception of newsletters is mixed: you must have articles that benefit your customers, or your newsletter is perceived as spam.
• Difficult. HTML in email is considerably more difficult to code, and less flexible.
• Editing is limited. Once you send it out, you cannot withdraw it if there are mistakes or updates.
• Customers can only comment to you. No one else will see the customer’s reply to you, which can be good if they have something bad or inaccurate to say.
• There are usually ongoing fees, either monthly or per newsletter, that increase as your email list grows.
• Recommended software: Constant Contact, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor