One of the easiest and most effective marketing tools you can use is an email newsletter. It allows you to build your brand, engage with your customers and even close sales. As you send email newsletters on a regular basis, you’ll also be able to build a relationship with your customer base and demonstrate an industry knowledge, creating more trust and leading to higher sales volumes.
Here are a few of the areas that you should focus on when crafting your email newsletter.
Plan It Out
To start off, you need to plan out your email newsletter. It seems easy to just write it up and send it out, but that won’t get you the result you’re looking for. First, know what kind of newsletter you want to send.
Whatever the focus of your email newsletter will be, keep it consistent. If you’re sending out a newsletter focused on business tactics and tips, you shouldn’t include a recipe for your grandmother’s cornbread.
You also have to give your customers a reason to sign up for your newsletter. You can incentivize them by offering a discount or coupon. Once you do that, be sure to set expectations from the get go, as for how often you’ll be sending newsletters and what content the readers can expect.
You should also figure out the look of your email newsletter. Pick a color scheme, one that follows the same look as your official website. You should stick to this color scheme going forward. You should also pick out a newsletter template that you’ll stick to. This will make your newsletters predictable for your readers.
Start Strong
With everything planned out and ready to go, you can finally write your newsletter. Nothing will kill your open rate like not starting strong. The first thing most of your readership will see is the subject line. These are statistics from leading data about newsletters:
- 35% of the recipients will open an email newsletter based solely on the subject line.
- 69% of people report emails as spam based on subject lines. That means your email subject line has the power to make or break you.
- 82% of marketers say a personalized subject line leads to more opens
- 75% of experts agree that a personalized subject line drives higher click-through rates.
Consider a few subject line options and try testing them out. Over time, you’ll hone your skills and know what will work best for your readers.
Along with making your subject line engaging, you have to pay attention to the opening of your email to grab their attention. If they aren’t interested in what you have to say, they’ll click away.
Context Clues
The content of your newsletter is crucial to building a successful following rather than having a bunch of people unsubscribe. To set yourself up for success, you need to connect with the reader, showing them how your brand and your products can provide them something of value or improve their lives.
Keep your content and your design short and simple so the message of your newsletter is clear. This will also help you personalize your content.
Throughout your newsletter, stick to the goal and focus of your newsletter. If you are jumping between topics or trying to cover too much ground, you’ll lose your audience. Instead, focus on being relevant.
Whether it’s highlighting new products or teaching your readers how to do something, make sure you’re on topic and relevant, it’ll matter to the reader. You want to keep your newsletter about 90% educational and 10% promotional.
Another thing you can do to connect with your reader is to offer a behind-the-scenes look at your operation. Introduce them to your workers. Show them your packed stock room. Send them pictures of your notes. Whatever your behind-the-scenes view is, give them a peek. It’ll help them feel a part of your business.
Visuals
While the content of your newsletter is critical to keeping your readers reading, visuals can certainly help. Adding simple things like pictures, graphics,, and animations can give you new ways of condensing information in an easy-to-read format. You might also consider using a brand mascot that helps with brand recognition.
An important part to adding visuals is adding alternative text to them. Better known as alt text, this is a way to add a short description of your visuals in case your readership has their images turned off for emails or in case you have readers with visual impairments.
This will also keep you from having chunks of blank space in your newsletter, keeping it more visually appealing and easier to read.
Nail The Closing
Just like you need to start strong, you have to finish strong. Consider closing with an offer, discount, or coupon. This will help incentivize your readers to keep reading in the hopes of another savings.
You might also have the offer connected with your primary call to action. Making sure you only have a single call to action is important or you’ll split the deck on what people choose to do.
You need to include links to your brand’s social media pages. This further allows your readers to engage with your brand. It can also help you in offering social proof, or demonstrating that a large group of people your readers trust would recommend and use your brand. This can improve the chances of your readers making a purchase.
Final Touches
Once you’ve sent the newsletter, you have to track, test, and optimize each one. That’s how you will know what to use in the future. You also have to come up with a way to send your email newsletters consistently. If you aren’t sending them on a schedule, your readers will likely miss them in their inbox.
As you do these things, you’ll find your email newsletters becoming your favorite marketing tactic. Along with marketing, it’s a way to connect with and form a relationship with your customer base. This will help you as a brand to grow and thrive.