In July 2020, I started a job at a small distribution company located in Paris, Ontario. When I say small, I mean we had under 50 employees, but our reach was fantastic. Parasource is the exclusive supplier of several large Christian brands and supplies churches and individuals all over Canada. Our biggest competition is Amazon, and in many cases, Parasource prices beat Amazon’s. However, there’s no competing with Amazon’s shipping time – and that’s the biggest barrier in the distribution market.
Faced with this dilemma, I started to brainstorm what Parasource could offer that Amazon can’t, and what I came up with was the benefits of a small business. The small but mighty team genuinely loves what they do, and enjoys many personal relationships with authors, suppliers, and customers. I wanted to capitalize on that and find ways to share just how much we believe in our product – and the Parasource Monthly Newsletter was born.
Parasource wasn’t unfamiliar with email marketing, but I wanted this to have a distinctly different tone than our weekly e-blasts, which were brief and sales-focused. The goal of the newsletter was to share our favourite things and add a personal element, injecting more personality into our regular communications.
The first newsletter had over 900 readers, and that has continued on a monthly basis since. We receive positive feedback from our readers on each one, and while it isn’t the goal often see sales generated by the books I recommend.
Newsletter Samples:
Linneah Tovstiga 