Newsletter or Blog?

[Tom Cain]

Has anyone switched their email newsletter, update notices, etc., to a product/business blog? With many recent changes to email delivery, I'm wondering if a using a blog to deliver information normally in your newsletter would be better than email.

There are pros and cons to both, and several ways to do both come to mind. I'm interested in experience and opinions on switching all actual content to a blog and reserving email for quick notes when the blog is updated. The goal is to increase subscriptions by, amount of content read by, and retention of people who are genuinely interested in what your company has to say.

Thanks for any insight.

[soniCron]

Blogs are (generally) a pull technology, and email a push technology. Any chance you have to push information is far more valuable than relying on the customer to pull it for themselves. Syndication feeds turn the blog from a pull to a push model, but you'll be hitting an entirely different set of users with that. (Typically more technologically inclined folk.) I think there are very good reasons to have both as a means of communication with your customers, but I ultimately believe any amount of a push is far more valuable than that of a pull.

[svero]

If you feel a blog is valuable and you have the time then why not just do both?

[Sillysoft]

I wanted a blog and email list for my product updates. So users could subscribe via email or RSS whichever they preferred. I created some code that runs them both off the same content, it's available if you want it:
http://www.rssmailinglist.com/

[Polycount Productions]

do both.

have a visible blog that user can use if they want, but also provide newsletter for announcements.