As you sit in a conference room trying to figure out how best to engage your customers and leads, sell more products or “stay top of mind” for your target audience, someone suggests an email newsletter that could solve all those problems.
It’s like you suddenly have “volunteered” to do it. You have to ensure that clickthrough and open rates don’t drop. Oh, and the first one must go out tomorrow.
E-newsletters are a popular type of email to send but they can be difficult to create. This post will show you how to create an email newsletter that your customers will love reading.
What is a newsletter?
A newsletter is an email which offers subscribers and fans the opportunity to receive your most relevant content, announcements and promotions. It can be useful for keeping your audience in the loop and helping you gain traffic.
Do you want to make your email newsletter project a success? Or revive an existing one? Here are 9 things to try to get right.
- Check out these successful newsletter examples.
- Decide what type of newsletter you want.
- Your newsletter content should be balanced to be 90% educational, 10% promotional.
- Set expectations for your Subscribe page.
- Use your imagination when writing email subject lines.
- Choose one recurring call to action.
- Design and copy should be kept to a minimum.
- Images should have alt text.
- It should be easy for people to unsubscribe.
1. Look at successful newsletter examples.
Where do you begin? Before you start creating an email newsletter, take a look at examples from both inside your industry and without. Find the ones you like best and think about modeling them first.
2. Decide what type of newsletter you want.
Email newsletters can be cluttered and unfocused. They support every aspect of your business. Blog posts are next to PR stories, product news is next to PR stories… it’s a mess. Email, whether it’s a newsletter, or not, needs one common thread to keep it all together.
A newsletter that is focused on a single topic can help reduce the randomness. Instead of focusing on your company, it could be focused on a specific vertical.
BuzzFeed’s “This Week in Cats”, newsletter is a great example of a topic-based email newsletter. (Don’t judge 🙂 Although BuzzFeed covers a lot of topics, they only offer one newsletter for cat lovers. The articles can get more engagement because they are aligned with a particular interest than if they were published on a website that has content from every page.
3. Your newsletter content should be balanced to be 90% educational, 10% promotional.
Your email subscribers won’t want to hear from you about your products and services 100% of your time. They may love you and want to hear about your products and services, but there is only so much you can do before they stop listening.
Let’s say you love a shoe site. Although you might be willing to sign up for the company’s email mailing list, what happens when you get emails 2-3 times per day asking you to buy, buy and buy? You might be more likely to buy from them if they send you educational content about new styles of shoes or how to match certain styles with certain outfits.
Don’t be that company. Avoid self-promotion in your email newsletters and instead focus on providing timely, relevant, and educational information to your subscribers. If you do not have a big, exciting piece of news about your product or service, so leave out the promotional bits.
4. Set expectations on your page “Subscribe”.
Once you have established your newsletter’s content balance and focus, you can make sure that you are properly communicating about them on the subscribe landing page.
Be specific with potential subscribers. Tell them exactly what the newsletter will contain and how often they should expect you to contact them. SmartBrief has a great example of how to make your subscribers happy. On the subscribe landing page it explains what will be in the newsletter . It also gives potential subscribers a preview URL. It’s worth a look:
Wouldn’t that be amazing as a subscriber? With open eyes, you’d know who your email will come from, what it will be sent to you, and how often. This information will also help you decrease your spam and unsubscribe rates as a marketer.
5. Use your imagination when writing email subject lines.
Your subscribers may sign up for your email newsletters, but it is not a guarantee that they will open them once they receive them in their inbox. Marketers often keep the subject line the same for every day, week, and month they send their emails. This helps increase familiarity with their subscribers.
Let’s face the facts: subscribers get tired of these subject lines fast. Why? Why?
Thrillist is one company that excels at this. Here’s an example:
6. Choose one recurring call to action.
Yes, a newsletter is a newsletter because it features multiple pieces of content and multiple calls-to action (CTAs). However, you don’t have to give all CTAs equal prominence.
Instead, you should have one primary CTA. It should be only the most important thing you want your subscribers to do. The rest of the CTAs should be “in-case-you-have-time” options. Your subscribers should be able to simply click through to view a blog post, or to forward the email to friends. Make it easy for them to understand what you want.
Below is the Scott’s Cheap Flights email newsletter, which promoted their latest travel deals. It has a photo to attract you in and is chock-full with information. But it’s also very obvious what they want you do: buy the premium plan to get exclusive travel deals. Scott’s Cheap Flights places the CTA above all other information to increase the likelihood that their email recipients will click it.
7. Design and copy should be kept to a minimum.
A newsletter can feel cluttered due to its nature, as we have already mentioned. Email marketers can look uncluttered by using concise copy and sufficient white space in their design.
It is important to use concise copy. You don’t want your subscribers to spend their time reading your emails all day. To make sure they actually read the entire piece of content, you want to send them to another place (your blog or website). Your subscribers will get a taste of what you have to offer — enough to make them want more.
Email newsletters should have white space. It helps visually reduce clutter and makes it easier for people to click on the right link on mobile.
8. Images should have alt text.
Visual content is an integral part of all marketing activities. It makes sense to include them in your email.
Right. Email is a bit more complicated. Most people won’t have images enabled so you need to ensure that your images contain alt text. Alt text is text that appears in place of images in emails. This is particularly important if you have images in your CTAs — you want people to click even if the image is disabled.
9. It should be easy for people to unsubscribe.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, this is crucial if you want to keep your subscribers engaged and active. Use simple language such as “Alter your communications with us” or “manage your subscription settings” You shouldn’t hide the unsubscribe button behind an image that doesn’t contain alt text ether. A clear unsubscribe process will not only keep your list healthy but also ensure that your email doesn’t get marked SPAM before it reaches the rest of your inbox.
10. Bonus tip: Test, test and test again.
Although I have just listed nine things to ensure you are sending email newsletters correctly, you also need to discover what works best for you and your subscribers. Different email subscribers like different cultures prefer different things.
These email newsletter best practices can be used as a starting point. Then, experiment to discover your secret sauce.
