Euchner-USA manufactures switches and components for the automobile machine and tool market. Four years ago, the company started expanding into other markets and verticals, courting manufacturers in the packaging, materials handling, robotics and semiconductor industries.

Euchner-USA was using pay-per-click campaigns and placement on GlobalSpec, an engineering search engine, to publicize its company and garner leads, but a new business focus called for a strategy that would get its name and products directly in front of a new audience, said Michael Ladd, the company's president-CEO.

GlobalSpec suggested Euchner-USA advertise in its "Specs & Techs" newsletter, so Euchner-USA signed on for six of seven issues, Ladd said.

The benefits of the e-newsletter advertising were immediately impressive, Ladd said. "The number of ads we generate per week being on a search site like GlobalsSpec is decent—about 40 to 60 per week," he said. "But when we run an ad in a newsletter, we can get between 300 and 700 leads."

Since then, Euchner-USA has been a regular e-newsletter advertiser. The company buys two levels of placement. The first has a product focus and consists of small ads with photos. The second is a more expensive "gold" sponsorship that features larger ads with multiple hyperlinked words. Ladd said Euchner-USA uses smaller ads during the quieter summer and end-of-year holiday months, and uses the larger sponsorships during the rest of the year.

GlobalSpec provides Ladd's team with a template, though he is responsible for a photograph as well as the headline and product copy. Euchner-USA does get a little help, however, when it comes to actual copy creation, he said.

"They try and give us pointers. We learned quickly that the newsletter needs phrases that are catchy, but nothing that's considered solicitation," he said. "We have to be interesting but keep from getting kicked by a spam blocker."

Ladd said GlobalSpec provides names and contact information for anyone who clicks through on the Euchner-USA ad so he can ask salespeople to follow up with additional data and information, such as a hard copy of the company's catalog and a company overview.

Today, the combination of strong leads and contact information is enough to convince Ladd to focus the bulk of his advertising budget on the e-newsletter. In fact, Euchner-USA spends about 70% of its overall advertising budget on e-newsletter advertising, with the remaining 30% going to pay-per-click advertising, print ads and industrial search engine ThomasNet, Ladd said.

"We just ran a series of print ads, and the advertising agency just called and asked if I wanted to meet and formulate a plan for next year," Ladd said. "I don't think we're going to bother. With GlobalSpec, we've got that lead as soon as it is generated, and that name goes into our CRM package so our sales rep can follow up. You can't do that with a print publication."