Industry and Market Newsletters as Intelligence Resources
Keeping customers and partners in the loop of developments and offers can be done quite effectively via newsletters that are delivered in hard copy format or electronically. Not only is this a crucial customer retention measure but a competitive tool as well where customers find another comparison opportunity across products and service offers.
Being the user of multiple industry newsletters equals a rich and constant influx of valuable intelligence. Many employees receive multiple of such memos and draw their own conclusions from them. At times contradictory, or even misleading, business related newsletters should be included in the market research and industry analysis process.
If newsletters are treated that way and the information given is being transformed into actionable intelligence, intelligence users should be alert of this function. Their own judgment and interpretation of the newsletters and other information received would be sharpened and moved closer to relevant business context.For example, if a Market Technical Service Center Head scours his market newsletters for relevant information on his customers, their applications and product, there might as well be another development at the Chief Marketing Officer level probing cross-segmental impact of new technologies to be used in various customer applications.