Email newsletters is one of the types of emails used in an email marketing campaign. As the name suggests, it often contains news and updates. Email newsletters aim to keep up business’ audience interest and, at the same time, very softly pushes them to do required actions. The statistics say that email marketing is effective. But statistics tell only part of the story. Statistics can’t predict whether your email marketing efforts will be effective. However, who said the perfect email newsletter doesn’t exist? With the following tips you’ll not only be equipped to create the perfect email newsletter, you’ll also begin to see results unfolding in your favor. Without further ado, the following are some tips on how to design the perfect email newsletter:
1) Give people a reason to opt in
Let’s take a step back for a minute. For you to get conversions in the first place, you need to have an active list of email subscribers. The best way to do this is to give them a great reason to opt in. Just saying “sign up for our newsletter” isn’t appealing. How can you approach this? Value. Pitch people with value. Give them an incentive to sign up. Give people who subscribe exclusive offers and discounts to encourage and motivate them to be subscribers and the newsletters they receive from you would be added benefits. Besides monetary discounts, think about other ways your company can add value to prospective newsletter subscribers. It depends on your company and your industry, but try to get creative here. For example, an airline could offer priority boarding to customers who subscribe to their newsletter. You could provide free online seminars or e-book downloads to anyone who signs up for your newsletter. Get creative.
2) Find the right tool
Before you get started you’ll need a means to distribute your newsletters easily. Although there is a vast amount of software out there for doing this, some of the most popular are MailChimp and Campaign Monitor, and Squarespace has just launched an email marketing service that looks good. The best tools offer really simple campaign and list management, make templating a breeze, and handle all the technicalities of sending lots of emails without getting blacklisted for spamming. Many also offer analytics tools so you can measure just how your campaign faired. Campaign Monitor’s World View provides an addictive live view of your mail getting opened all over the world, which is particularly satisfying.
3) Know your audience
There are many ways to use a newsletter, depending what business you are in. It could be that you wish to notify people of a new service you’re offering, or an update to an existing one. It could be that you want to shout about offers, previews or discounts. Before you launch into your newsletter’s design, it’s important to nail down exactly what it’s trying to achieve. Your recipients have chosen to receive your updates, so make sure they’re your priority. Learn who your subscribers are and always bear them in mind when creating your newsletters. What do you think they’re interested in? What do you want to share with them?
4) Write a great subject line:
Subject lines have the power to make or break your email marketing campaigns. About 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone. At the same time, a whopping 69% of email recipients will report email as spam based solely on the subject line. Make subject lines mobile-friendly. People check email on mobile devices more than webmail or desktop. Use a free tool like Zurb’s TestSubject to make sure your subject line and preheader look great across mobile devices. Subscribers get bored easily. Use a variety of subject lines to keep their interest. Using emojis in your subject line can increase open rates by 45%. Get creative with it!
5) Balance your newsletter content to be 90% educational and 10% promotional
Chances are, your email newsletter subscribers don’t want to hear about your products and services 100% of the time. While they may love you and want to hear from you, there’s only so much pitching you can do before they tune out. In your email newsletters, get rid of the self-promotion (most of the time) and focus on sending your subscribers educational, relevant, timely information. Unless you actually have an exciting, big piece of news about your product, service, or company, leave out the promotional parts.
6) Pick one primary call-to-action
Okay, part of what makes a newsletter a newsletter is that you’re featuring multiple pieces of content with multiple calls-to-action (CTAs). But, that doesn’t mean you should let those CTAs share equal prominence. Instead, let there be one main CTA – just one main thing that you would like your subscribers to do. The rest of the CTAs should be “in-case-you-have-time” options. Whether it’s simply to click through to see a blog post or just to forward the email to a friend, make it super simple for your subscribers to know what you want them to do.
7) Keep design and copy minimal
A newsletter can easily feel cluttered because of its nature. The trick for email marketers to look uncluttered revolves around two things: concise copy and enough white space in the design. Concise copy is key — because you don’t actually want to have your subscribers hang out and read your email all day. You want to send them elsewhere (your website or blog, for instance) to actually consume the whole piece of content. Concise copy gives your subscribers a taste of your content — just enough that they want to click and learn more.
Conclusion:
Follow these tips and you’ll have a beautiful newsletter you can shoot to your subscribers. Keep things short and sweet. Make your content valuable, and don’t forget to test your email before sending it out to others, and you’re good to go. All the best with your next newsletter. You got this.