Small Businesses Really Read Your Email Newsletters


For the past two years some have been predicting that RSS feeds and spam would kill the email newsletter. However, it appears that email newsletters are alive and well.

In fact, small businesses subscribe to between one and five email newsletters. Even more interesting: most actually read — or at least skim — the majority of newsletters they receive.

The following chart from a recent survey of small and medium sized businesses by Bredin Business Information shows just how attracted small businesses are to email newsletters. A whopping 88% read or skim all the newsletters they get.

Small Businesses Read or Skim Most Newsletters

Another interesting point is that the smaller the business (under 20 employees), the more they seem to rely on the newsletters they receive.

This comes from a survey of 314 small and medium sized business owners, of businesses with 1 to 500 employees, by Bredin Business Information. The full survey has some other interesting results about email usage — get a copy of the full survey on their website.

6 Comments ▼

Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

6 Reactions
  1. Once again Anita… a wonderful and timely reminder. Thank you for this. It inspired my own comments on my small business blog and yes, I included an excerpt from this with a link back. Thanks for the thoughts and the inspiration. http://www.soky.biz/2007/04/e-mail-newsletters-useful-piece-of.asp

  2. You still cannot deny the fact that a lot of valuable information comes to you through newsletters, and it’s obvious that others feel the same way.

  3. Thanks for posting this! I think these statistics will be very encouraging for many businesses who might think their newsletters are going straight to the “trash”. This is also a reminder that good newsletter content WILL get attention from the readers!

  4. I always take advantage of supplier newsletters. They offer insight on new products and great sales offers to save me money. It also draws me back to a website that I may have forgotten about or just have not had time to look at.

  5. Anita Campbell

    Yes, Amanda, I agree that a newsletter is great for drawing you back to a website and pointing out something you may have missed.

    By the way, I enjoy your newsletter, too. 🙂