Email newsletters are an extremely important part of email marketing. Communicating with emails is one of the most impactful ways for you to deliver key messages to your customers and audience. In order to know how to successfully present your email newsletters, let us first discuss what email newsletter marketing is.
Email newsletters are a type of email that inform your audience of the latest news, tips, or updates about your product or company. These can also promote new products, specific deals, promos, etc. Simply put, the goal of newsletter emails is to effectively build a relationship between a customer and a brand. Even when you’re not selling anything, this is the best way to keep that important rapport alive.
Don’t let the last quarter of the year pass you by without an effective way to retain and communicate with your customers through email newsletters!
Get clear on your delivery
A key way to stay effective through your communication with your customers via newsletters is making sure you are clear on your delivery. Get clear on your end goal, with each email newsletter.
You want to ask yourself these questions…
- What do I want to achieve with this newsletter?
- Do I want my customers to subscribe to something?
- Is this an educational newsletter?
These questions will help you get clearer on your newsletters. So many times, we want our newsletters to do a thousand things all at once, when really a clear plan and executing it well will be the most effective way to reach your email list. It’s important to note that with this to be successful, you first need to understand and who your audience is. That way, you know what they’ll react well to, and what will help retain them.
There are a couple of ways to figure out your audience, but a fun one would be to simply ask! Conduct a survey to your existing subscribers about what they would like to see in your newsletters, what they hope to learn from your business and even what deals of yours excite them the most!
Now with this all in mind, no one has time to sit and read a 10 pager email newsletter…You want to make sure that you are hitting the mark each and every time. Short and sweet actually can work in many areas of your business!
Guide your audience to CTA’s
Call to actions are imperative for any marketing email to be effective because it concludes everything that you’ve stated and why the customer should continue with you. Sometimes we as business owners can get a little happy-feet with our CTA’s.
Please, please understand us when we say it is OKAY to have only 1 CTA. Don’t be afraid to have just one main thing that you’re asking your subscribers to do. The rest of the CTAs should be secondary options.
Stick to one primary CTA that will direct your audience to either click through to see a blog post or just to forward the email to a friend, for example. Make it super simple for your subscribers to know what you want them to do.
More than 90% of visitors who read your headline also read your . So it’s important that they aren’t solving a puzzle of sorts to try and figure out where you need them to go next. Your CTA’s should make sense, your audience really, should already be asking themselves, ‘ where do I go to read another blog’ , or ‘ how do I make sure to be on that list’ , ‘ where can I get that deal ?’ These are the answers your CTA’s should be providing.
Establish a sense of urgency
The chances of your audience opening and reopening your newsletter emails multiple times are slim to none. Why? Because if at the first time of opening, they don’t feel the urgency to act upon the CTA, they probably won’t the second time…
Have killer visuals + media content
Another great way to have effective newsletter emails is having awesome visuals! Just how we keep visuals flowing through our blogs, it should be the same with our newsletters. Truth is, not every customer will read each and every word you have in your newsletter.
We have to keep in mind not everyone connects with our businesses just through words, they need to see it as well. The average subscriber only spends 51 seconds reading a newsletter. If you’re hoping your newsletters resonate with your audience, include visuals. Pictures and infographics make it easy for people to follow your email!
Now, just as much as pictures are imperative, white space is also key. Why? Because it helps visually take off any heavy load on the eyes and remove the feeling of emails looking cluttered. This is particularly needed for mobile apps, as it makes it easier for people to click the right link.
Provide valuable content
Apart from your visuals, allow your newsletter content to be 90% educational and 10% promotional. Why? Who wants to buy from a business that always tells the customers to buy their product but never why that product is needed?
Think of it this way, if you are a product based business, you have a great product and customers are buying from you. It’s great right? But, if you never tell them why they need that product, why would they stay? Why would they react well to your CTA’s?
Why would they click on your newsletters and your new offers? What would be keeping them? Or what about your product would give them that feeling to tell a friend or another business to partner with you? The chances of your customers wanting to hear 100% of the time of the services and products you have and the deals you’re working with, is slim. They want substance. They want facts.
Valuable content is key, because you don’t actually want to have your subscribers hang out and read your email all day. Remember while writing your newsletter, that it’s a process/guide to another area of your business. The newsletter is not the last place your customers would go, rather the stepping stone to stay with your business. This content should give your subscribers a taste of your content; just enough that they want to click and learn more.
Entice your audience with golden headlines
First and foremost, the difference between a headline and a subject line is that the subject line appears on top of the email, separate from the content. Your headline is the first line of content within your email itself.
Headlines can make or break your average rate of opening emails. Effective newsletters need to have great headlines. Period. Here’s why:
About 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy. Knowing that information, your headline has to be specific to draw in your audience. Even the length of your headline matters. You don’t want a whole sentence for your headlines, that’s what subject lines are for.
Every time you send out an email, especially newsletters, they should be introducing your topic well. How you introduce your emails can raise or lower your audience’s interest in continuing to your CTA’s.
This works hand-in-hand with your email newsletter’s subject line. If the subject line isn’t compelling, your reader may not even open it. The thing about headlines and subject lines are a couple of things. They are to work together in keeping your audience engaged. Your subject line should tie into your headline.
So what are we saying here? First off, cut off boring subject lines- ‘April Newsletter’ doesn’t give anyone a reason to open their emails. Now that’s just it. Ask yourself after creating your subject line if you’d open the email. If your answer is no, back to the drawing board for your subject line.
At the end of the day…
Email newsletters are an extremely important part of email marketing. Communicating with your customers and audience on email is crucial. Ensure you are hitting the mark each and every time you create your email newsletters through setting and hitting your goals, having primary CTA’s. Never ever again have your newsletters without some height of urgency.
It matters how long and how much content is in your newsletter. Remember, no one wants to read your 10 pager emails and on that note, make sure your newsletter content is 90% educational and 10% promotional. Your true audience will always want substance from your newsletters, not just deals but more knowledge! Lastly, your headlines and subject lines need to be creative. Cut out the boring subject lines-get personable with your audience and see your numbers sky rocket.
Originally published at https://www.bookmark.com on October 26, 2021.
