There isn’t an easy answer to this question.
On the one hand, email bulletins are simple, easy to put together and cheap to deliver. On the other, if you’re not careful with how you maintain your mailing list, you may be accused of spamming, what you send may not be what is actually delivered and your message may not even get by a corporate mail-server, no matter how well you know the individual it is addressed to.
On the other hand, printed mailers are more expensive, you have all the problems of street addresses and postage and just the sheer bulk of it all.
Ease of use has been a key factor in undermining the use of email for marketing purposes. Because it was easy, it was over-used. It still is. I am getting spam in German and Russian, and, just for the record, my knowledge of either language is not great.
Click-throughs used to solve some of the problems but too often they were used as Trojan horses to deliver viruses into your computer.
On balance, we’d always recommend short and simple email bulletins to people you know, or you have business relationships with. If you need to make clients and others more aware of what you are up to, then put that information in a website, or a blog like this.
Cover of Standard Bulletin magazine
If that doesn’t work, go back to print and deliver your message the old-fashioned way. Maybe that’s the reason why corporate magazines like The Standard Club’s Standard Bulletin are getting to be fashionable again.
Magazines like this have a stature and quality (if they are well-designed!) that it is difficult to replicated through any email.
Another development that’s easing the problems with the preparation and despatch of magazines, bulletins and mailers is the improvement in the quality of digital print.
Mailing addresses can be laser printed directly onto whatever material you need to despatch – no labels anymore!