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Twitter is killing the newsletter.

I saw this tweet today: “user: We’ve sent 11 newsletters to our users in the past 12 months. The click % has dropped from 29% to 6%. How shitty is that?”

Obviously, something is changing - and I doubt its their business or following. I think twitter as a form of social and corporate interaction, is revolutionizing the way we’re informed about our favorite brands and businesses. Its direct, short, simple, and immediate. If I’m following a company’s twitter, and maybe some of its employees - do I really have time to read the monthly newsletter? Probably. But, what are the chances it’ll have anything new to tell me? Slim to none.

Twitter is one of the first, if not the only social networks where people/customers really do want to interect with businesses which they may use, or follow for whatever reason. I use it more for business than for friends - and I bet so do most of the people who are still posting on Twitter after 4 months.

The question I pose, is now that you may be following your favorite store/design company/auto maker etc. do you really need to get the monthly newsletter as well - or is it just becoming more fuel for your spam folder?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 7:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Twitter is killing the newsletter.”


Allan Branch Said @ October 7th, 2009 at 7:49 pm

Very interesting. I think Twitter is killing blogs and my ability to read a blog posts longer than 3 paragraphs. Is Twitter shortening our attention spans or just showing us how small, short and precise we can be when we communicate over the internet?

TheBigPants Said @ October 7th, 2009 at 7:55 pm

Very rarely do companies have effective newsletters, with the exception of enticing sales or discounts. In addition, most people associate it with the various other spam they recieve and discard it all together.

Jaisen Said @ October 7th, 2009 at 8:47 pm

Not sure I’d go as far as saying it’s killing the newsletter. I think it’s definitely “changing” its delivery mechanism. I think it will take some time before newsletters are dead though.

That being said, I’m with a startup that’s specifically designed to a “Constant Contact for Twitter”. So, obviously I agree with your initial statement :). It’s at http://publicitweet.com.

jason koertge Said @ October 7th, 2009 at 9:09 pm

I think it depends on the demo you’re talking to with your blog/newsletter. The majority of our readers are 45 and older and female and the only measurable fluctuations in open rate and blog traffic seem to be only tied to content. e.g. hot topic equals high open rate and high traffic.

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