If you’ve got more than two decades under your belt, you probably remember a time when you checked your email with enthusiasm. In the early days of the Internet, emails trickled into your inbox at a slow, stable pace.
Nowadays, that steady trickle has turned into an avalanche. Sure, you still get valuable updates from your friends and favorite companies, but they’re buried under mountains of work emails and dozens of newsletters you forgot you signed up for. If you’re under the impression that the age of email newsletters is over, hold off on renting the hearse: email newsletters are still very much alive. While they may not be as snappy as they were a decade ago, they’re still a worthwhile marketing tactic for any business that wants to communicate directly with its fans.
An excellent newsletter can work through today’s crowded and noisy inbox to inform, entertain, and delight your readers, which can positively impact your bottom line. Rebecca Greenfield says it best, “In a post-email world where our inboxes have turned into cesspools of accountability, the Internet newsletter – against all odds – has made a comeback.”
Why email newsletters might still be the great marketing tactic ever
Email newsletters aren’t the flashy marketing flavor of the month like the latest social media platforms can be. But numbers don’t lie, and the numbers say that email newsletters not only work – they might work better than anything else your marketing department is currently doing. “Email remains a much more effective way to engage customers than social media – nearly 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined.”
The four main goals of email newsletters
- Build a relationship with readers
- Keeping readers informed about Company and industry news
- Reinforce the Company’s story and reputation
- Increase the visibility of the Company, products, and services
Email newsletters vs. email marketing
Marketers must realize a big difference between a newsletter’s look, feel, and purpose and an email marketing campaign. Things like automated follow-up emails based on a consumer’s behavior or a carefully crafted drip email campaign designed to lead a potential customer through a sales funnel do not belong in the realm of newsletters. That’s not to say that newsletters shouldn’t contain calls to action – many of them do – or try to sell products or services. Instead, the purpose of a newsletter is usually:
- build a relationship with readers
- To inform readers about Company and industry news
- reinforce the Company’s history and reputation
- Increase awareness of the Company, products, and services
- How to create the world’s best email newsletter
Is it time to revitalize your Company’s email newsletter? You may find it harder than ever to get valuable opens and clicks. Your readers have an inbox crammed with other newsletters and insufficient time or interest to read them all. That means your newsletter doesn’t just have to be better than all the others – it has to be much better. These tips will assist you in developing a masterpiece among email newsletters that readers won’t be able to get past.
Write an intriguing subject line and snippet
The subject line of your email is the first thing readers see and the most important element they consider when deciding whether or not to open your message. If your subject line is dull, confusing, or irrelevant, it will be the first and only thing your readers see when they scroll on.
There is no perfect formula for a subject line. Instead, your goal is to intrigue the reader so that they open the email. That may mean writing an enticing teaser, something funny, or highlighting a problem the reader is dying to solve. Keep it short and sweet, and don’t forget the snippet: Most people checking their inbox will see the email’s subject line and a snippet. Use this snippet to include more context to the subject line or to explain what readers can expect when they open your newsletter. Test different subject lines to see which resonate best with your readers.
Write great content
If you want your email newsletter to wow your readers, you need to write crisp, active content that readers will love. Your content will depend on your newsletter’s purpose, function, and primary audience. For example, if you are a nonprofit organization, you should include a powerful case study highlighting your organization’s various efforts. If you’re a company like BuzzFeed, your newsletter should be full of compelling headlines so readers can’t resist clicking through to your main page.
Figure out what you want to accomplish with your newsletter, and then write straightforward, concise, and compelling content to achieve it. Your newsletter content should be as high-quality as your best blog posts.
Pro tip: Avoid writing too much. Newsletter readers skim content, so less is more.
Extra pro tip: Establish a primary call-to-action element, then make sure that the active element is the most significant, easiest, and most supported call to action.
Questions your newsletter content must be able to answer
- Why did they concern about your website in the first place?
- Satisfy their search for information or knowledge
- What is their biggest problem?
- Every niche has its main problems to solve
- Focus on a problem your reader is trying to solve, and then offer a solution path
- What are they afraid of?
- If you can identify your reader’s fears and offer them a solution, you will immediately engage them emotionally and cognitively.
- What could make them more money or help them achieve their goals?
- Give readers data that could help them achieve higher sales or another goal.
- What are the industry buzzwords?
- People often sign up for your mailing list simply because it seems good.
- Whatever your market buzzwords are, use them to appeal to your target audience.
- Excellent design and graphics
Excellent design and graphics
A newsletter is a professional marketing tool that should look that way. Suppose you don’t have a graphic designer to help you with this. In that case, you’re in luck: most email service providers, such as Appledew, provide professional templates that even the biggest techie can use to design an elegant, personalized newsletter quickly. When designing your newsletter, use plenty of white space and top-quality images. That might mean investing in stock art, but the beautiful result is worth the cost.
Pro tip: Google Images is not your treasure trove of images! Using an image you found on Google in your newsletter without permission could be copyright infringement.
Create value
Give your readers an engaging reason to open your email by pampering them: Treat them like VIPs. Each beautiful email newsletter includes information on the latest and greatest beauty products, exclusive offers, and insider tips.
Make it mobile-friendly
Do you know how most members of the youngest generation are glued to their phones? Well, so is every person else, and it’s time to embrace the mobile reality for your newsletter. Ensure your email looks as good on a small screen as on a large computer monitor. Before you send your following newsletter, send yourself a test email and open it on your phone. Check to see if the content seems too long, links have trouble loading, and how the graphics display on your phone.
Segment and test
Sending personalized newsletters to specific email list segments is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Still, it increases the likelihood that your newsletter will resonate with people on that list. That, in turn, leads to more opens and more clicks. for example, highlights one Company, Gilt Group, that sends 3,000 variations of its daily email based on users’ previous browsing habits on its websites.
Of course, you don’t have to write a separate newsletter for each person on your email list. But let’s say your nonprofit has two main goals: building schools in impoverished communities and improving access to clean water in those same communities. Of course, you could send a single newsletter to your entire email list, telling them about both endeavors. Or you could ask people who cause is more important to them when they sign up for your newsletter and then send a customized email to each list with more information about your school construction projects or water projects.
Testing your newsletters is another task that needs more effort but can pay big dividends. Choose only one factor to test at a time – otherwise, you won’t know which factor is affecting your results – and then test two or three different versions of it. Kissmetrics suggests tests:
- Calls to Action
- Subject lines
- Message layouts
- Personalization
- Body text
- Headings
- Closing text
- Images
- Quotes
Numerous email support providers have built-in A/B testing capabilities. Could you take advantage of them? A five percent increase in open rate on a list of 25,000 people means 1,250 more people read your email!
Utilize your marketing platform to A/B test components of your email newsletter
- Calls to action
- Subject lines
- Message layouts
- Personalization
- Body text
- Headings
- Closing text
- Images
- Offers
Grabbing a person’s attention with an email newsletter is more difficult today than ten years ago, but it’s still worth the effort. Despite the increase of social media, email offers that personal touch to a person who has shown interest in your business. Take the time to create a strong email list to save many marketing dollars in the face of social media’s increasing “play-for-play” channels.
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