Publisher Advises Small Business Owners: "E-Mail for Regular Customer Contact is A Waste of Time. Printed Newsletters are Much Better and Postcards are Today's Best Kept Marketing Secret."

Vancouver, WA -- March 7th, 2003 -- For companies who want to stay in close contact with their regular customers and best prospects, Maury O'Connell, publisher of Newsletters To Go advises: "Forget e-mail, forget the Internet - e-mail newsletters are a big waste of time – too impersonal. Call on customers. If you can't do that, use an old-fashioned, printed newsletter and, if the budget is tight, inexpensive postcards will work just fine." Newsletters To Go, a publisher of postcard newsletters for those smaller companies that need powerful marketing tools but don't have the resources to do their own in-house, is challenging e-mail.

Marketing veteran and newsletter publisher Maury O'Connell talks about it on the company web site, www.Newsletters-To-Go.com. "I'll admit e-newsletters are fast and easy, and the price is certainly right, but they tend to get mixed in with all the spam and clutter of the Internet. And, with one quick click they're vapor." He says, "Getting an e-mail newsletter is akin to reaching some company's automated phone system: way too impersonal and, very often, not at all satisfying." O'Connell claims the best way to stay in touch with customers is to call on them personally. If you can't do that, send an old-fashioned, printed, company newsletter, every month, regular as clockwork. Customers perceive it as something sent from you to them. "It's just like reaching out, tapping your customer on the shoulder each month and saying, ‘Hey, remember me?'" Werner Zink, CEO of RESCO Plastics Inc., a newsletter subscriber for years, says, "It's been proven time and again, regular contact keeps my name in the top of my customer's mind. It sets me above my competitors, it helps keep my customers loyal."

"Why recommend postcards for newsletters? Not very much space for news on a postcard, right?" "That's really beside the point," O'Connell says. "The whole idea is that you care enough to send something." Tom Wemett, a Rochester, N.Y., realtor and a long time newsletter believer, says, "It's not the size or what you say that's important; what really counts is you took the time to send it. That's what lets you stand out from your competitors." O'Connell explains, "A shrewd marketer - who is keeping an eye on a tight budget - can achieve big results with a small investment using postcards. They're inexpensive to produce and, at 23 cents, a bargain to mail. Postcards are today's best-kept marketing secret. Merging the two tactics - newsletters and postcards - creates a very powerful yet relatively inexpensive marketing strategy."

Theis is one newsletter publisher that remains firmly convinced that strong customer relationships can't be forged with e-mail. O'Connell says, "The bottom line is: for effective customer contact, there is no quick fix and there are no shortcuts. To get the job done right, sometimes, old-fashioned ways are still the best."




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