How to create a successful newsletter
You’ve just written a long newsletter and sent it out to all your subscribers, holding your breath for the sudden rush of new visitors pouring into your website. But nothing happens and you notice that it’s just a regular day as any other, the newsletter didn’t seem to have had any effect.
When this happens, you might think newsletter isn’t an effective marketing tool since you didn’t get the expected results. We’re here to tell you that newsletters are a great marketing tool if you know how to use it correctly. Here’s our tips on how you can create a more successful newsletter and get better results!
Make sure your newsletter has a clear purpose
First and foremost, you need to think about why you have a newsletter and what’s the purpose of it. What content does your newsletter need to have to fulfil the intended purpose? If you don’t know the purpose behind your newsletter, it’ll be easy to fill it with the wrong kind of content and confuse your recipients. Make sure you have your purpose in mind when you create your newsletters, so your newsletters keep being consistent for your recipients.
Avoid sending unecessary emails
Have you ever experienced getting a ton of emails from a company in your inbox? Every day when you open your inbox there’s a new newsletter with almost the same message and content as the one they sent the previous day. If there’s one way to quickly lose subscribers from your recipient list, it’s by sending out too many emails to their inbox. That’s why it’s important to find the right frequency for sending newsletters from your company. For some, it means sending out newsletters once a week, for others it means sending them out once a month. Once you’ve found the right frequency for your newsletters, make sure you stick to it.
Sure, there might some exceptions, like for instance Black Friday, where your recipients might expect a higher number of newsletters, and that’s fine. But don’t make it a regular occurrence, stick to your set frequency of newsletters so your recipients know what to expect from your brand.
Think about your layout
After thought about what makes a text easier to read? Usually you’ll linebreak and section the text into more readable pieces to make it easier for the reader, since most people wouldn’t handle a wall of text well. Think about your newsletter in the same way.
Make sure you’ve got clear sections in your layout that invites the reader to keep scrolling in the newsletter. Have a “less is more” attitude to how you choose to build up your newsletter. Make sure you’ve got enough whitespace in your layout since a lot of your recipients will read it on their phones. With good spacing and whitespace it’ll be easier to click links on their phone screen.
Keep it short
With too long texts it’s easy to lose your readers before they reach the end of your newsletter. A simple way of knowing where your readers drop off in your e-mail is to look into your statistics. What links was the most clicked one in your newsletter? If all your clicks are at the top of your newsletter and less in the bottom, that’s a sign that you’re dropping off readers before they reach the end of the newsletter.
Think about trimming the length of your newsletters to make it easier for your recipients to read everything in your newsletter.
Have clear and visible CTAs
CTA stands for “Call To Action”, and by having clear and visible CTAs you’ll make sure your recipients understand what action you want them do take in your newsletter. Does that mean you should fill your newsletter with CTAs? No, it’s important to think about “Less is More”.
One of the benefits of having a newsletter is that you can fill it with CTAs, but that doesn’t mean all your CTAs should have the same weight. Make sure you have one CTA as your focus. The other CTAs should function as an opportunity for your readers to do an in depth-dive into a subject that’s interesting to them.
Think about the placement of your CTAs, the lower in your e-mail you place an important CTA, the less chance you’ll have of your readers clicking it. By using clear and visible CTAs your newsletter will be less confusing for the recipient, and they’ll easier understand what action they should take.
Think omnichannel
How do you make sure your newsletter reach your customers? Simple, you’ll just send it out to everyone who’s a subscriber right? But how do you increase your subscribers? You should always have a signup-form on your website where interested customers can subscribe to your newsletter. The sign-up form might be a popup that offers them a discount or you’ll have a banner at the bottom of your website the can signup on.
Once you start creating and sending out newsletters it’s also important that you spread information about it in your other marketing channels. Let your social media work as an amplifier of your newsletter. Use social media to give readers a preview of your newsletter, but save the real content for the newsletter itself. Then you’ll increase the chance of having a customer or reader become a subscriber for your newsletter.
Always test your newsletters
The benefits of a newsletter is that you can make decisions based on data. Make sure to always test your newsletters so they perform the way you’ve intended. Most modern tools for newsletters offer A/B-testing as a built-in function. Use A/B-testing to try different subject lines, different images or placement of CTAs for instance. Don’t forget to look into your statistics after every sent newsletter, to see what gave most clicks for instance. Is it something you can reuse in your next newsletter? Try it out and see!
Marketing Automation gives you the next step
E-mail doesn’t have to just be a newsletter that you send out once a week to your subscribers. With a Marketing Automation-tool like for instance Automated Flows, you’ll be able to reach your customers through their entire customer journey with relevant e-mails. With a Marketing Automation-tool you’ll make sure you’re always “Top of Mind” with your customers.
Do you want to know more about how it works? Contact us and we’ll show you how you can get more success with your newsletters and Marketing Automation!
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