A newsletter works where customers buy repeatedly or where there is genuine seasonal information to send. For a business whose customers need them once every several years, occasional relevant messages beat a regular schedule nobody asked for.

The question to ask first

Not whether you could write one. Whether your customers want to hear from you on a schedule.

The honest test: would a customer notice if it stopped. For most local service businesses the answer is no, and that is worth knowing before committing to something monthly.

Nobody wants a regular update from a business they use every four years. The relationship is real and it is not a subscription relationship.

Where a newsletter genuinely works

Repeat purchase businesses

Retail, food, anything customers buy from monthly. There is always something to say and they already expect contact.

Sharp seasonal businesses

Where a well-timed message before the season is genuinely useful. A landscaping business writing in March, or a heating business in September, is telling people something they need to act on.

Businesses with a maintenance cycle

Where the message is a reminder that something is due. That is not a newsletter so much as a service reminder, and it outperforms one substantially.

Where the audience is professional

Trade customers, referral partners, and other businesses, who read industry material as part of their work.

Where you have genuine expertise people want

A narrow enough specialism that your view is worth reading. Rare, and real where it exists.

Where it does not

The padding point is the practical one. A monthly commitment with nothing to say produces company news, recycled general advice, and eventually silence, which is worse than never having started.

The better alternatives

For most small businesses, three things work better than a regular newsletter.

The service reminder. A message when something is due, based on when you last attended. Individually relevant, expected, and it produces bookings rather than opens.

The seasonal message. Two or three a year, timed to when the customer needs to act. Higher value per message than twelve generic ones.

The occasional genuinely useful note. Sent when there is something worth saying, without a schedule. Customers do not resent this because it is never filler.

All three have the same advantage: they are sent because something happened rather than because a date arrived, which is what makes them relevant.

The list matters more than the format

Where a business does send something.

A list of existing customers who agreed to hear from you is worth considerably more than a larger list gathered indiscriminately. Engagement affects deliverability, and a list full of people who never open it makes your messages less likely to arrive for everybody.

Consent requirements under Canadian anti-spam legislation apply to commercial electronic messages, including how consent is obtained and recorded and what identification and unsubscribe mechanisms messages must carry. Those requirements are worth understanding properly rather than assuming, since the rules are more specific than most businesses realise.

Practically: collect addresses with a clear statement of what you will send, keep a record of consent, and honour unsubscribes promptly.

If you do send one

  1. Decide the frequency you can actually sustain, and halve it.
  2. Write from what happened, rather than inventing subjects.
  3. Keep it short, since length is not value.
  4. Send from a person, not a general address.
  5. Make replying possible and answer replies.
  6. Stop if it stops being useful, which is allowed.

The first is where most fail. A monthly commitment made enthusiastically in January becomes an obligation by April and an abandoned list by August.

Quarterly is sustainable for most small businesses and is frequently enough.

Judging it

Not on opens, which measure a subject line and are increasingly unreliable as a metric.

On whether it produces enquiries or bookings that can be attributed to it, on replies, and on whether unsubscribes are rising.

A rising unsubscribe rate is the clearest signal that the content is not what people expected, and it is worth reading as information rather than as attrition, which is the reading described in reading unsubscribes correctly.

The honest recommendation

Most small local businesses should not start a newsletter.

They should collect addresses with consent, send a reminder when something is due, and send two or three genuinely useful seasonal messages a year. That is less work, produces more, and cannot become an obligation nobody wants to meet.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know whether a newsletter is worth it?

Ask whether a customer would notice if it stopped. For most local service businesses the answer is no, which is worth knowing before committing to something monthly.

Where does a newsletter genuinely work?

Repeat purchase businesses, sharply seasonal ones, businesses with a maintenance cycle, professional or trade audiences, and where you have a narrow specialism worth reading.

What works better for most small businesses?

Service reminders when something is due, two or three seasonal messages a year, and occasional genuinely useful notes sent because something happened rather than because a date arrived.

Does list size matter?

Less than engagement. A list full of people who never open makes your messages less likely to arrive for everybody, so a smaller consenting list is worth more.

What are the consent requirements?

Canadian anti-spam legislation governs commercial electronic messages, including how consent is obtained and recorded and what identification and unsubscribe mechanisms are required.

How should I judge it?

Not on opens, which measure a subject line and are increasingly unreliable. On attributable enquiries, replies, and whether unsubscribes are rising.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Feeling like you should be sending a newsletter?

We usually recommend service reminders and two seasonal messages instead, which is less work and produces more.

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