LinkedIn Newsletters vs Email Newsletters. Which One Wins for B2B?

In the blue corner, we have LinkedIn newsletters and in the red corner, we

have off platform email newsletters.

Question is listeners, which will win the title for best for B2B businesses.

G'day listeners, it is coach Michelle J Raymond, and this week we're going to be

talking about all things newsletters, and it's really top of mind for me because

it's something that I kind of in the back of my mind, know, I should have always

had one since I started my business.

And guess what?

It's coming up to nearly five years and I have never got one started off LinkedIn.

I have got one on LinkedIn, but it's taken me up until now to finally

wrap my head around why I should be doing it, be in the right space

for it and actually get it done.

That's right listeners.

It is now crossed off my to do list.

Thank you Lil for all of your help as always and shout out to

Louise Deed over in New Zealand.

She was the one that actually got me to set it up and not gonna lie, there's a

little bit of argy bargy because the last thing that I ever want is to send out

something to people that annoys them.

That for some reason they're like, stop sending me and hitting that

unsubscribe, which is what I find myself doing more and more lately.

And, on the other hand, this is where I'm conflicted.

One, I don't want to send out, you know, stuff that people don't find valuable.

On the other side, I don't want people to miss out on all of the

cool stuff that I've got for them.

All the tips and strategies that will help them grow their business.

So let's have a look at this today.

We're going to have a look at pros and cons between LinkedIn newsletters and

also the newsletters off the platform.

So before we do that listeners, let's have a a quick word

from our sponsors Metricool.

Let's dive straight into the pros and cons of LinkedIn newsletters.

Here's why I love mine.

Ever since I started my LinkedIn personal one, I've gathered eight

and a half thousand subscribers.

And I love the fact that every time somebody reaches out to connect with

me, they are automatically invited to become a subscriber to the newsletter.

So LinkedIn is actively helping me to get more and more subscribers, which I love.

It's on autopilot.

It's not another job that I need to do.

And so the more that I build my personal brand, the more people

reach out and connect, the more newsletter subscribers that I get.

So that's a huge tick for me.

But possibly even bigger tick was just how easy it was to set up.

So starting your newsletter on LinkedIn, I love that it's free.

So that's always a big bonus.

I love that it takes only a few minutes to actually set up and you

get some reasonable features in there.

Like we can embed this podcast episode, YouTube videos that I make, we can have

images, so they're quite rich formats.

It means that the newsletter is not really boring.

You can make it come alive.

So that's another reason that I love it.

And the thing that LinkedIn does, like, how cool is this?

If you didn't know the very first newsletter that goes out for

you goes to every single one of your connections and followers.

Now that is a massive free kick.

It is the only time listeners on LinkedIn that something like that happens.

If you're doing a newsletter on your Company Page, and then it will

go to all of your Page followers, and that's a massive advantage.

So I've discovered in working with my clients across the

board that you can expect to get roughly 30 percent subscriber rate

based out of your total number.

So if you have 3000 connections and followers, then you could expect

to get around a thousand newsletter subscribers, which I think is pretty cool.

It's such a fast way to get started with your newsletter.

I love the fact that these newsletters are indexed by Google.

So not only can my newsletter get discovered on LinkedIn, I can

piggyback off LinkedIn's credibility and basically have it show up when

people are doing Google searches.

And I've had people reach out and connect.

It's often why you see people are engaging with your newsletter long

after it's ever been published.

And you think.

Wow.

How did they stumble across that?

So that's another cool thing that I like about it.

So there's, so many pros going on here and I think, you know,

the main one is that I've already built my community on LinkedIn.

I've built my credibility on LinkedIn.

And so from this perspective, it's easy to just leverage that.

Now, upside, downside and everything, you know, I love to give you both sides.

What are the downsides of a LinkedIn newsletter?

Probably the most obvious one is that I don't own the subscriber list.

So I can't get in and download a list of emails.

I'll never own that.

I can go in and see who has, I can make sure that I'm connected to them.

I can have conversations.

There's lots of other cool things that I can do with this.

But I can't use it off the platform.

Now, if LinkedIn was to do something where they decided that they wanted to

change the algorithm or pull the plug on newsletters altogether, then I'm

going to be in a world of pain, right?

Like no other words for it.

I think I would rock in a corner and start crying.

So please LinkedIn, hear our prayers, do not get rid of LinkedIn newsletters.

Now, the good news is listeners.

I don't think they're going to do that.

They're backing LinkedIn newsletters and have been very strong around

those reasons of being, it's a great tool for thought leadership.

So it can really help B2B buyers through that journey by sharing, you

know, extended thoughts, beyond the short form that comes with posts.

The other thing that it's not so great at is I would say analytics.

I think when you can't access things like open rates or how far down they

read, you really don't have a lot of tools to work out did people like this?

What's resonating?

Are they just opening it and not going down and actually reading it?

And, that makes it tricky to ever improve.

So yes, we can go by our number of impressions or the comments and

things like that, that are happening.

But for me, realistically, there's not a lot of really in depth

analytics that we can go into.

The other thing is you don't have as many of the kind of cool, smart

features that you get for LinkedIn newsletters as what you would get for

some of the other platforms that are more dedicated newsletter platforms.

And so from that perspective, I can't, tag where people come from.

I can't tag them into specific channels so that I can really personalise

my newsletters and target them more specifically in the future.

So, you know, There are some downsides.

So upside downsides, as I said, I was going to share, but ultimately

for me, I found that the LinkedIn newsletter is something that

is a cornerstone of what I do.

I'm sending one on my personal page every single week.

As soon as a new episode goes live of this podcast, there's a newsletter

that accompanies that as well.

So it's a really great way for me to cross promote things and

leverage my LinkedIn community.

So if LinkedIn newsletters are so good, why did I go and invest in setting

up my own newsletter off LinkedIn?

Okay, so let's talk about email newsletters that happen off LinkedIn.

Now I'm certainly no expert.

I've just shared, I've only gotten started this week.

So I'm going to share the link for my brand new off

LinkedIn newsletter with you.

It is b2bgrowthco.com/newsletter is where you'll find it.

And I'm going to share the links into the show notes as well.

And so here we are listeners brand new newsletter off LinkedIn.

Why is it necessary?

What are the pros?

Well ultimately I'm going to own the list of people that

subscribe up to that newsletter.

So I'll have full control over that data.

If social media platforms change their mind, it doesn't matter.

I've still got access to all of these details.

I can still stay in contact with my community, which I love.

So it's really an insurance policy from that side of things.

Now, as you're building up that list, there are a lot more smart features, a lot

more targeting, a lot better analytics.

When you think about it, really, obviously a platform that is specifically built

around newsletters is going to have a lot more features than something where it's

a bit of a nice to have over on LinkedIn.

So from that perspective, there's so much upside.

And especially, as I said, things like analytics, where you get to see

open rates, see what's resonating.

I could see how very quickly and easily that you can start to build

up a pretty cool subscriber base.

And give them a product that they actually find valuable.

And that's the thing that I, I don't think LinkedIn can compete with at this

point in time is there's no way of really telling what's working or what's not.

So that makes it a bit tricky from my perspective.

Another upside for newsletters that are sent off LinkedIn.

I think people treat them differently when they're signing up for something.

And I think we either value them or we're ruthless and unsubscribe.

So those people that find them valuable, remain loyal.

And they are going to have a higher chance of converting into new customers.

And so that's something that I'm always looking for.

How can we use our community to stay in touch, stay top of mind, not fight

the algorithms over on LinkedIn land, like it seems to be all the time.

LinkedIn's getting more crowded.

I'm competing for more attention.

Maybe LinkedIn decides that it's the year of short form video, which is looking

very much likely what they're pushing.

So newsletters slide down a little bit in features and maybe I have to

look at where I'm spending my time.

Now, from that perspective, there is lots of upside for

these newsletters off LinkedIn.

Absolutely.

But here's the thing, how long will it take me to build my brand

new newsletter off LinkedIn?

So it's going to require me to be actively promoting all the time,

talking about it, whether it's in this podcast, in my posts, in conversations.

Making sure that I've got some methods for drawing people

into this new subscriber list.

I think it's going to take years for me to get anywhere near the eight

and a half thousand subscribers that I've got on LinkedIn.

And it's probably like building a podcast.

When you first start out, you've got zero listeners and it

takes time and it takes effort.

And it takes a lot of focus to actively try and promote the podcast, and I think

it's the same with the newsletter, If you want to grow those subscribers.

Is it worth the effort?

Absolutely.

But will I always have the time and energy in my business to consistently do this?

Time will tell and obviously this is something that I'm adding into my workload

and I've got Lil helping me, but I want to make sure that we make the most of

this, now that it's all been set up.

The other kind of con for me in my mind is that I often think who

needs another email in their life?

Do people really want to subscribe to another newsletter?

And I feel like when you're competing for attention in their inbox, and with

all of the automatic filtering that goes on these days with emails and making

sure that things get delivered, they're some of the question marks for me.

And if you've got any thoughts on this, or this is your area of expertise, reach

out and connect with me on LinkedIn.

What are your tips for getting around some of these issues that I've got

going on in my mind, some of these thoughts, and these are genuinely

the roadblocks that have been coming up for me over the last five years.

But then the other side of me and what Louise said to me was Michelle.

Like you never do anything that's not of value or in service of your audience.

And if someone unsubscribes, it's not the end of the world.

They just unsubscribed.

It doesn't mean anything.

So I've had to reframe how I see this and just know that I'm going to put my heart

and soul into these things, just like I do with everything else to make sure that you

walk away with tips that you can action, strategies that will make a difference

and really stay on top of how you can use LinkedIn to grow your business.

So we've got the pros and cons between LinkedIn newsletters, and we've

got the pros and cons between email newsletters, but is there a third option

that we need to be thinking about?

I think if we were to review the pros and cons of each of these newsletter

formats, we would find that things would come out reasonably even.

And there would be people that would pick a side, but ultimately I think they're

both cool tools that we should be using.

And I think the actual real winning solution here is a hybrid.

It is a combination of using both.

And for some of you might be thinking, Oh my God, Michelle, I can't do even more.

How am I going to ever have a LinkedIn newsletter, an email

newsletter and do all the other things that I've got to get done?

And I hear you, I'm in exactly the same boat as you, but there's

nowhere that says that you can't repurpose one way or the other.

My friend Irit, she just got started.

She's got a really amazing email newsletter that she

puts a lot of effort into.

I find it really valuable and it's something that I'm subscribed to.

And I always walk away going, I'm so glad that I read that.

And I said to her, why don't you share that on LinkedIn as well?

Because there are people over there that would really love it.

And maybe it's a different way of reaching audiences at different times.

They may or may not see one or the other.

And there's a concern that most people come with, but isn't it duplication?

Will Google hate me because I've got two lots of the same information?

No, no, No.

The world's not going to end if you repurpose your content.

For me, my LinkedIn newsletters have previously also been turning

into articles, for my blog on my website, and now I'm going to be

taking some of the information that's in my LinkedIn newsletter

and putting that in my other one.

Now, my email newsletter is not going to be exactly the same, and

I'm still planning exactly what that might look like, but I want it to be

short and sharp and have things that people can actually take away and go.

Yep, I can do that.

It doesn't matter how busy I am.

That is something I can take action on because I can see that's going to

get me closer to my business goals.

So I don't think that we have to choose a side.

I think the option is.

How can we leverage the best bits of both to get more growth for our business?

And as marketers, if you are responsible for your email newsletter

off the platform, you could easily promote your LinkedIn newsletter

on that and vice versa, depending what your business goals are.

So if you've got KPIs to grow your newsletter off LinkedIn, then why not use

your LinkedIn community to get you there?

I worked with one client, they have 150,000 Page subscribers.

Overnight, we got about 25,000 subscribers for their LinkedIn

newsletter, which was mind blowing.

And fast forward a few months, it's pushing up to close to 50,000 subscribers.

Now that is not a number that anyone would sneeze at.

That is a captive audience.

We know that every time that newsletter goes out, LinkedIn's notifying

all 50,000 of those subscribers.

So you're not fighting the home feed algorithm.

So for those of you who don't have a Company Page newsletter, but are

actively growing your Company Page absolutely make sure that your newsletter

is a part of this because it's such a great way to engage your community.

So the question is, listeners, are you on the blue team for LinkedIn newsletters?

Or are you on the red team for email newsletters?

Or is there a new team that we should be joining, which is the green team,

which is all about the hybrid approach.

And I think that's the one that resonates with me taking the best of the tools

that we have available to us, repurposing so we're not drowning in extra work.

And for me, it's just another way that I can make sure that I'm staying

top of mind with my community.

I'm sharing information that will make a difference to them.

And ultimately, so when they're ready to buy, who do they think of?

B2B Growth Co Michelle J Raymond.

And that is exactly how these things are designed to work.

So as we wrap up today's episode, I have one other super cool announcement.

For those of you who are listeners to the podcast in Denmark and around

that area, I am coming back to speak at the Linked Summit in May.

I cannot wait to come back.

I would love to see you.

It's just such a fabulous event.

So if you haven't been before there's a reason that I'm flying to the other

side of the world again, six weeks later, after I get back from speaking at

Uplift Live and Social Media Marketing World, cause it is worth that effort.

So I hope to see you there.

So until next week, cheers.