Adding Value to Customers and Developing Brands through Electronic Newsletters

Online communication is highly efficient for contemporary business, in most market sectors. In this context, companies use several online instruments in order to achieve a wide array of objectives. Among these, online newsletters (e-newsletters) are widely used, since they offer a lot of benefits for companies. Since they are flexible in terms of format and content, they are suitable to address a wide variety of publics. Therefore, e-newsletters could be not just informative (as they are widely seen), but also could add-value to customers and support branding processes and relationship development. The present paper investigated various benefits of e-newsletters in this context and highlights some rules to ensure an effective added-value e-newsletter. The research made on the e-newsletters of 5 of the leading publishing-houses in Romania shows that, at least in this market sector, this instrument is not used at its full potential. It is considered in most cases a way to stimulate sales, either directly by announcing sales, or indirectly by announcing new books releases. In some cases news on events and on the activity of the publishing-houses are presenting, leading to image development.