Writing Email Newsletters As Your Audience Actually Wants to Read
This makes email the single most powerful tool for marketers. It’s a powerful tool, and the returns are large, thus, it is a must in your marketing strategy. But blasting out any old content here and there isn’t enough. So what makes a newsletter stand out to maximize the potential of email marketing? Your newsletter is a trove of marketing. Which is why it’s vital to treat it like one. To learn how to take your newsletter game to the next level, we’ve gleaned advice from top email marketers everywhere. Stay tuned for how to make your emails pop!
What is newsletter marketing?
Living in the digital age, businesses are always in search of avenues to reach their target audience, construct relations and foster conversions. Newsletter marketing is one of the best ways to accomplish this. But what is it, and why should your business care?
What is newsletter marketing?
Newsletter marketing is a type of email marketing that involves sending regular emails to subscribers who have opted in to receive news, promotions, and valuable content from the business. A newsletter can be anything from the company news, insights from the industry, blog updates, product promotions and special offers
Why is Newsletter Marketing Important?
1 Direct Engagement with Your Readers
While the reach of social media is often determined by algorithms beyond the content creator’s control, email newsletters go straight into the inboxes of subscribers.
2. Helps Build a Stronger Relationship with Customers
This helps build trust and keeps your subscribers around because they know they are going to get something valuable when you send an email.
3. Boosts Website Traffic
Mailing newsletters that link to articles, products, or promotions can help drive traffic to your blog, website, or landing pages.
4. Boosts Sales and Conversions
A well-planned email campaign enables businesses to market their offerings, run discount campaigns, and generate sales through compelling CTAs.
5. You Can Never Go Wrong With Marketing
Email marketing is more cost-effective than paid ads and other traditional marketing and provides the best return on investment (ROI).
How to Create an Effective Newsletter?
1. Build a Quality Email List
Build your list organically by providing incentives such as free resources, discounts, or exclusive content in return of sign-ups.
2. Write Engaging Subject Lines
A subject line decides if your subscribers would open your email. Be explicit, straightforward, and forward, and make it enticing.
3. Provide Valuable Content
Do not sell, sell, sell in every email. Members: Instead of trying to sell, find a way to provide some value, whether that be tips and tricks, guides, or industry news.
4. Make Use of an Engaging Design
Readability is important, and a mobile-friendly email design increases engagement.
5. Make Sure to Include Your Calls to Action (CTAs)
Whether it’s reading a blog post, making a purchase, or signing up for an event, be sure to lead your readers to what’s next.
6. Analyze and Optimize
Monitor open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to adjust your strategy as needed over time.
How to Write a Perfect Newsletter
1. Review successful newsletter examples.
Before you start crafting your own email newsletter, take a peek at some examples from your industry and beyond. We've rounded up a bunch of our favorite newsletters in an ultimate lookbook. It's a great way to get inspired and see what works well. Checking out what others are doing can give you ideas and help you figure out what you might want to include in your own newsletter.
2. Determine if an email newsletter is essential for you.
Standing up to a work assignment from your boss can be incredibly intimidating, particularly if it involves something like developing an email newsletter. But if it won't work with your marketing plan, don't waste time, and energy on it.
Start by conducting research. Research successful email newsletters in your industry and make notes of their contents. Assess your available resources — budget, time, and support — to see if you could find success.
Next, ask yourself about your business goals. Is it to generate more leads, qualify your leads better, close more deals, or better retain your customers? If an email newsletter doesn’t meet these goals or isn’t preferred in your industry, get your efforts elsewhere—like establishing a lead nurturing e-mail workflow or writing a blog.
If you have data and an action plan in hand, engage your boss. Even if you don’t see eye-to-eye on going for an email newsletter your boss will appreciate that you’ve come in with ideas on how to achieve that success.
3. Figure out what kind of newsletter you want to send.
With email newsletters, we tend to make them too cluttered and try to stuff entire businesses into one email: product updates, PR stories, blog posts, event recaps. To avoid this, you need a theme to hold the newsletter together.
One strategy here is to become more targeted on a specific subject. Instead of attempting to cover your whole company, focus a newsletter on a single vertical or theme. BuzzFeed, for example, has a weekly newsletter for cat content, “This Week in Cats.” BuzzFeed gets a lot of heat for being the go-to website for irrelevant trivia and list-style articles covering things from politics to sexual orientation, and yet it has managed to identify a niche population that is receptive of quirky cat news as each newsletter is dedicated solely to cats, even though it covers a range of different topics. Due to the nature and specific focus of its coverage, the newsletter experiences considerably higher engagement rates than a potentially across-the-board newsletter covering various aspects of the website.
4. Your newsletter content to be more educational and less promotional.
Likewise, your email newsletter subscribers likely do not want to hear about your products and services all the time. They like to hear from you, however it does not take long to get used to always receiving sales offers.
For example, consider my experience with a shoe company. I am a fan of their shoes and freely subscribed to their email list. Now they inundate my inbox (literally) with anywhere from 2-3 sales emails daily, and honestly, it's too much. Instead of always marketing its product, it could offer educational content about up-and-coming shoe trends or how to style them with clothes. If they provided useful information instead of just pitch after pitch, I would be more inclined to read their emails.
Avoid being that company. Create email newsletters where the focus is on educational, niche, and relevant information, while saving the product or service promotion until you have something really exciting to share!
5. Do creative with email subject lines.
While subscribers may sign up for your emails, there's no guarantee they'll actually open them once they land in their inbox. Some marketers attempt to boost familiarity by using the same subject line each time they send out an email—whether it's daily, weekly, or monthly.
But this strategy can backfire. Subscribers get tired of similar subject lines very fast — they provide no immediate benefit to entice a user to click on that specific email. Alternatively, you want to write unique, creative, and engaging subject lines for every newsletter you send. This maintains subscriber interest and leads to higher open rates.
6. Simplify your design and copy.
To achieve a clean and uncluttered magazine look for your newsletter, focus on the following two elements: concise copy and white space in design.
Why is a concise copy important, though? We don’t want to make our subscribers waste too much time reading our email. Rather give them a snippet of your content to help them decide to visit your web or blog to read the entire piece. This is how you get people to click and engage.
In the case of email newsletters, white space is more than just a blank space; it is a crucial element of design that diminishes the visual clutter and increases the readability. Functionality: Sufficient white space, particularly on mobile devices, makes it simpler for recipients to scroll through and click on whatever links they require.
7. Include alt-text with clear descriptions for all images.
Considering that visual content is critical to your general marketing campaign, this makes sense! But email poses a special problem. By default, the recipients will have images that are not enabled. That’s where alt-text is important.
For images in emails, alt text (alternative text) is important. It acts as an alternative to images when those images cannot load. Mind you, this is especially important for the visual representations of your calls-to-action (CTAs). Alternative text allows recipients to comprehend and act on your email content, no matter where they disable images.
8. Make it easy for individuals to unsubscribe from your emails.
It does feel counterintuitive, but it is an important part of keeping your subscriber list active and engaging. Keep your language straightforward, ‘Change how we you communicating with you’ is confusing, and do not hide the unsubscribe button behind an image without alt text. A clear unsubscribe process also contributes towards preventing your emails from getting marked as spam before they reach the rest of your subscribers’ inboxes, in addition to keeping your list healthy.
9. Pick one primary call to action.
Although newsletters can hold several contents with different calls-to-action (CTAs), usually, there is one CTA that is more important than the others, and that needs to be prioritized. This primary call to action should serve as the “head honcho,” signifying the top action you want your subscribers to take. Other calls to action can be supplementary, giving subscribers other options to explore in case they have more time or interest. Whether you want them to read a blog post or share the email with a friend, it is essential to make it simple for subscribers to take the desired action.
10. Keep the Content Relevant
The most important thing is sticking to the subject and being consistent with your brand. For example, if you own a professional website design company or gaming company, emailing your subscribers about recent sporting events, politics, or local weather is off-brand and won’t rattle the cages of your subscribers.
Have your audience select their interests to make sure you send content that is worth their time. Give them the option to choose what they read about, and how often they want to receive emails. Customizing Options in the Sign-Up Process Giving the option of customization during sign-up your audience allows them to filter out what interests them.
FAQ: Writing Email Newsletters That Your Audience Actually Wants to Read
1. What is an email newsletter?
An email newsletter is an email that is sent regularly giving updates, news, or useful content about a brand, product, or industry.
2. How frequently should I send email newsletters?
But it varies with your audience and content. Weekly or monthly newsletters are great, just don’t bombard subscribers with too many emails.
3. How to make my newsletter interesting?
Send interesting and relevant content instead of promotion, use creative subject lines, opt for plain design, and add a crystal clear CTA.
4. What to put in my email subject lines?
Package it in a way that is original, short, and captivating. Do not repeat the subject line, as it lowers open rates.
5. How can I stop my emails from going to spam?
Email-only to those who subscribed, do not use excessive promotional language, and always give an obvious unsubscribe option.
6. Can I add images to my newsletters?
Yes, but always include alt text, so the user knows what is in the image even if it doesn’t load.
