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What makes a lab customer open a newsletter
Your readers are scientists, process engineers, quality people and buyers. They are short on time and get plenty of supplier email. They open what might save them work, such as a protocol, results from an application close to theirs, or a note that a datasheet has changed. They delete the weekly discount catalogue unread.
The test is simple. Before sending an issue, ask whether a lab manager would forward it to a colleague. If not, it is probably advertising dressed up as a newsletter. Sending the occasional one is fine, but if every issue is like that, the list goes quiet.
One newsletter per type of reader
A scientist and a buyer do not want the same thing. If your sign-up form asks for role and application, and the CRM stores it, you can send each reader the version that fits from the same underlying work. Starting with two or three segments already makes a real difference compared with one email for everyone.
- Scientists and lab managers, with application notes, protocols and webinars.
- Process and scale-up engineers, with scale-up cases, performance data and equipment updates.
- Quality and validation, with documentation changes and IQ and OQ support.
- Procurement and management, with field service, maintenance contracts and company news.
How often should we send the newsletter?
As often as you can sustain with useful content. One issue a month is a good starting point, because you stay visible in the inbox and still have time to do it properly. If there are not enough topics for that, every two months or every quarter is better than sending empty issues.
What to cover each month without running out of topics
Topics come from inside the company. Questions that sales and field service hear, application notes from the lab, a trade show you will attend, a product update or a real case a customer has agreed to share. With a running list of those sources, one issue a month is not hard to fill.
A structure that works is one main story, two or three short items and a single clear call to action at the end, such as booking a demo or registering for a webinar. One issue a month that keeps going for years beats a weekly one that stops after three months.
Want us to look at your recent issues and how your list permissions are recorded? Leave your details and we will tell you what we would change first.
Review my newsletterPermission to send it, GDPR and Spain's LSSI
If you send from Spain, Article 21 of the LSSI prohibits promotional emails the recipient has not previously requested or expressly authorised. The exception is existing customers, provided the contact details were obtained lawfully and the email covers your own products or services similar to those they bought.
In that case you must offer a simple, free way to object, both when you collect the data and in every message. Article 22 requires every email to include a valid electronic address for unsubscribing, and Article 20 says the message must be identifiable as commercial and show who is sending it. Article 21 of the GDPR also gives people the right to object to direct marketing at any time.
In practice, a business card collected at a trade show does not, on its own, show that the person wants your newsletter. The cleanest route is to ask at the booth, with a form or QR code that includes a consent checkbox, and to record in the CRM when and how permission was given.
Which language should we send it in?
The reader's own, if you have it. Store the language in the CRM from the sign-up form and prepare one version per language for the markets where you sell. If you cannot translate it into all of them yet, English works for international customers, but a German issue for a reader in Munich or a Spanish one for Madrid gets read with more interest.
Getting into the inbox
A great newsletter that lands in the spam folder is useless. Google requires everyone sending to personal Gmail accounts to authenticate their domain with SPF or DKIM and to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%. Senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts must also support one-click unsubscribe in marketing email.
Many pharma customers use corporate email rather than Gmail, but the same habits help. Send from an authenticated domain with a sender name people recognise, remove addresses that bounce and unsubscribe anyone who asks straight away.
Which email tool should we use?
One that connects cleanly to your CRM, supports segments by role and language, handles unsubscribes automatically and lets you add UTM parameters to links. Also check where it stores data and sign a data processing agreement. The brand of the tool matters less than keeping the list clean and the permissions on record.
How to tell whether the newsletter drives quote requests
Open rates say little about what matters. Tag every link with UTM parameters, such as utm_source, utm_medium set to email and utm_campaign with the month's issue. Google Analytics suggests utm_content to tell apart two links in the same email. That shows which items send traffic to product pages and which end in a quote request.
The final answer sits in the CRM. Check how many newsletter recipients have asked for a quote or a demo, and whether open deals move forward when they read. We connect the email tool to the CRM so that, for example, a sales rep gets an alert when someone from a company with an open quote clicks a scale-up article.
