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If you’re a credentialed professional and you’ve decided you should have a newsletter for your small business, you might’ve noticed that people use the terms “newsletter” and “email marketing” interchangeably. And in many ways, the two concepts very much overlap.
But it’s also super murky in part because of who most email marketing and newsletter advice is for. (Spoiler alert, it’s most often not the type of business you run!)
Before we can tackle this, and which is right for your business, let’s back up a moment and actually define these terms.
What is email marketing?
I define email marketing as educational and/or promotional email messages sent via an email marketing platform or newsletter platform to a group of people who have consented to receiving those emails. They can also revoke that permission at any time.
The key word is permission. For the purposes of this post, email marketing is showing up in someone’s inbox announced.
(Versus cold emailing is showing up unannounced. It’s not necessarily bad, just different, and it’s not what we’re talking about here.)
A few other definitions that I find helpful in thinking about email marketing include Josh Spector’s definition of it being a “value delivery tool”, or Yuval Ackerman defines it as “relationship-building channel.” I also look at it as a visibility and trust-building tool.
What is the difference between email marketing and a newsletter?
A newsletter, which Merriam-Webster defines as “a small publication (such as a leaflet or newspaper) containing news of interest chiefly to a special group”, is where dissemination of information and ideas is nestled.
I believe that email marketing exists on a spectrum that ranges from that dissemination of information on one end to selling on the other.
Here’s what that looks like in practice, with the actions the reader is taking on the other side.
On the information end of the spectrum, people on the receiving end – or your subscribers – are consuming content. They’re reading the actual words in your email, or maybe watching a video or listening to something, depending on what platform you’re using. This end is about you sharing your ideas and thoughts with people.
Moving a little further along, you might want them to click on a link – maybe to watch a YouTube video, listen to a podcast, or read a blog post you wrote. It’s still more information and ideas rather than selling, though embedded in those external links you might be doing some selling.
Moving more into the selling side, you might ask your subscribers to take some sort of action beyond just passively clicking a link. That might be booking a call, signing up for a workshop, or filling out a poll. (And filling out a poll can range from simply clicking on a link to select an option to asking people to reply.)
And all the way over on the selling end, you’re actually asking for the sale. Telling people about your products or services, maybe sharing testimonials or case studies, but the goal is to make money. These emails can be informative, but the goal is typically transactional.
The Venn Diagram: Newsletter vs. Email Marketing
Another way to think about this is with a Venn diagram:
In one circle, you have Thought Leadership: your ideas, observations, perspectives on your field.
In another circle, you have Updates: announcements about new podcast episodes, blog posts, events, what’s happening in your practice.
And in the final circle you have Products & Services: the things you’re actually selling.
A newsletter typically sits at the intersection of thought leadership and updates. You’re sharing your thoughts and ideas, and you’re keeping people informed about what you’re creating and what’s happening in your world.
Email marketing encompasses all three: thought leadership, updates, AND selling your products and services.
Sometimes “selling” looks like “I have this program I need to fill, so I’m going to send daily emails for a week promoting it.”
But it can also be more subtle and ongoing. For example, the way I typically structure my Automate with Heart newsletter is through storytelling and bringing it back to a concept in email marketing. I’m pretty much always pointing back to my email marketing services, but I try to make sure that people get value out of my newsletter whether or not I’m actively pushing for a sale.
My way of doing my newsletter sits in that area where the Thought Leadership and Products and Services circles overlap. It’s less common that my newsletter fit into the Updates bucket, unless I’ve guested on a podcast and I want to promote that.
You can move along this spectrum based on what your practice needs at any given time. Sometimes you’re just staying in touch. Sometimes you’re letting people know you have openings. Both are valid.
Is a newsletter considered email marketing?
While a newsletter might not feel like email marketing because you’re not selling something, you are in fact marketing: you’re marketing your ideas.
What you’re not necessarily doing is selling in the sense that there’s not an exchange of money for sharing your ideas (unless you have a paid newsletter, but that’s a whole other business model).
But if you’re running a service-based business, your newsletter is still working for you – it’s building visibility and trust with your audience. When someone needs what you offer, you’re top of mind because you’ve been showing up consistently in their inbox, sharing valuable insights and establishing yourself as someone who understands their world.
The beauty of understanding this spectrum is that you get to choose where you want to be at any given time.
There’s no “right” way to do this, only what serves your business and your subscribers best.
What the newsletter vs. email marketing framing misses for credentialed professionals
From my perspective, part of the confusion around email marketing vs. newsletters is because it’s written through a one-size-fits-all lens that often assumes one of two things:
Assumption #1: The newsletter itself is the product.
Think the paid-subscription Substack model, or newsletter operators building to tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers to sell ads or earn money through digital products and affiliate marketing.
Assumption #2: You’re running promotional campaigns to a large list.
You have lead magnets, tripwires, value ladders, and series of launch emails to promote products or time-based services.
A lot of newsletter or email marketing strategy advice is written for either one of these models, where list growth is a huge focus.
But if you run a small practice, where it’s either just you or you have a small team of employees and/or contractors, you’re not actually a newsletter operator OR necessarily doing pure email marketing. So that advice, applied to your practice, either doesn’t land, or creates a newsletter that feels completely misaligned and extremely salesy.
(Which might explain why you’ve read a lot of email marketing content and still feel like you’re doing it wrong. You’re not doing it wrong! You’ve just been reading advice not geared toward your type of business.)
So whether you call it a newsletter or email marketing in my opinion misses the point, and frankly I think you should use whichever terms sits better with you.
What actually matters is how it supports your practice – and where on that spectrum you want it to sit.
Understanding where you fall on this spectrum is crucial because different platforms are designed for different purposes.
Email marketing platforms like Kit, Mailchimp, Mailerlite, and Flodesk can handle all three purposes.
Newsletter platforms like Substack are really intended for just the first one: thought leadership.
Where do you fall on the email marketing spectrum?
Take a moment to think about your current email practice:
- Where does your newsletter sit on the spectrum right now?
- Where do you want it to be?
- Are you using a platform that supports your goals?
Understanding where you are, or where you’re headed, will help you make better decisions about everything from which platform to use to what you write about to how often you send.
Once you know where you fall on the spectrum, the next question is which platform actually supports that goal. Here’s how to choose the right one for your practice.