For years, people have gotten printed newsletters. At our office, newsletters are the pieces of mail that are most likely to get marked up and passed around. Newsletters are friendly. The don’t scream “I’m trying to sell you something.” So people don’t instinctively recoil and protect themselves as they would when approached by the guy with the checkered jacket and yellow bowtie at the car lot. Newsletters have very low sales resistance. One reason newsletters don’t come across like Joe Isuzu is they are usually not sent unsolicited and therefore don’t need to get reader attention with flashy, outrageous pictures of car salesmen catching bullets in their teeth. Less graphics means more room for news. Newsletters commonly make longer, more serious, more factual presentations than are found in advertising or direct mail. There is more room for thoughtful discussions and that makes the newsletter content more credible. And yet, for all their vaunted seriousness, newsletters generally come across as friendlier (or did I say that already). Along with the serious content, editors can get away with including a cartoon or a personal note, material that says, “we are doing business here, but we're having fun too, aren’t we?,” material you would never find in an ad or direct mail piece. Of course, the above applies to all newsletters, print or online. What sets online newsletters apart is this. Print newsletters need to be formatted so that everything fits on an even number of pages. Did you ever see a 3-1/2 page print newsletter? No, I thought not, but 3-1/2 page newsletters are common in electronic media, so are 5-7/8 page newsletters. Print newsletters need to be printed, machine addressed, handled and mailed at an expense which is never lower than 50 cents a copy. An equivalent number of online newsletters can be printed, addressed, handled and mailed for the cost of, well, a few kilowatt hours. And finally, newsletters commonly have coupons which the reader can return for more information or a free sample. In the case of the print newsletter, in addition to filling out the coupon, the reader has to hunt up an envelope and stamp and make a trip to the post office. The online newsletter provides the same service to the reader for the price of a few clicks. In fact the online newsletter also keeps track of whether or not the reader liked the newsletter, read any of the articles, and wanted any more information, things the print newsletter would never be able to do.