Even if you disagree with his or her vision in doing an email newsletter, your boss will be glad you came prepared with a plan for success. One of the biggest problems with email newsletters is that they're often cluttered and unfocused because they're supporting every aspect of your business. One way to help reduce the randomness of an email newsletter is by keeping it to one very specific topic. Don't judge I recently adopted a kitten and I've become full-on obsessed with cats.
Though BuzzFeed writes about pretty much everything under the sun, they offer up one specific newsletter for people who love reading about cats. Because the niche is aligned with a specific interest, the articles have an opportunity to get way more engagement than they would in a newsletter featuring content from all over the website.
Case in point: I have a thing for shoes, and I especially love this one shoe site. If they sent me educational content -- maybe about the latest styles of shoes, or how to pair certain styles with certain outfits -- I might be more inclined to buy from them, or at least start opening their emails again. 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. Get specific. Tell potential subscribers exactly what will be in the newsletter as well as how often they should expect to hear from you. Check it out:. As a marketer, having this information up front will help diminish your unsubscribe and spam rates as well.
Many marketers try increasing familiarity with their subscribers by keeping the subject line the same each day, week, or month that they send it. A better approach would be to try to have a different, creative, engaging subject line for each newsletter you send.
One company who does this really well is Thrillist. Even though I know that these emails are coming in my inbox every morning, the subject lines are what entice me to click. If you need help with your email newsletter subject lines, check out this recipe. Instead, let there be one head honcho CTA -- just one main thing that you would like your subscribers to do.
Check out Second Glass ' email newsletter below, which was promoting their most recent Wine Riot event in Boston. It's colorful and chock-full of information By placing this CTA above all the other pieces of information, Second Glass increases the chance that their email recipients will click on it. Like we said before, 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.
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. White space is key in email newsletters because it helps visually alleviate the cluttered feel, and on mobile, makes it much easier for people to click the right link.
Look to Tom Fishburne's blog post newsletters to see how this should be done. The main blog post has one large comic, a few small paragraphs of introduction, and a link. The rest of the newsletter components are smaller and more visual, making the whole design feel uncluttered an easy to read.
This is especially important if your CTAs are images -- you want to make sure people are clicking even without the image enabled. Each email marketing program is different, but here is one tutorial for adding alt text to email. Besides keeping your list healthy, having a clear unsubscribe process will help ensure your email isn't marked SPAM before it hits the rest of your list's inbox. Take a look at charity: water's newsletter below to see how to do this right.
The link to unsubscribe is bolded and capitalized, making it really easy for you to take action on it if you wanted. No footer hunting required to uncover where the heck you can change your email settings. Just like different cultures of people prefer different things, different groups of email subscribers prefer different things. So use these email newsletter best practices as a jumping off point … and then experiment to find your secret sauce.
Here are a few things you can try:. All of your subject lines should be on the short side. They work better that way. But have you ever tried infusing a little humor into your copy? If the company has a new boss, is planning a renovation, or is changing the way it does something, use your company newsletter to update customers. If customers are complaining about a particular aspect of your business, address it in your newsletter. Keep it positive, ask customers for their patience, and make every effort to fix the problem quickly.
Break out your smartphone and provide a short tour of your business for customers to check out in your newsletter. Give customers a look behind the scenes by posting pictures of employees moving massive inventory for the holiday season, or a shot of your team stocking shelves. If you have a few extra minutes, consider shooting short YouTube videos to give customers a glimpse of the work that goes into the business.
You can promote social initiatives in your newsletters too. Are you giving away something cool on Facebook? Remind your customers about it in your newsletter. Provide participation details and a link to enter. Ask subscribers to join a social competition. You might ask them to submit photos of themselves using your product or write a short essay about a loved one.
Launch the competition in your newsletter and remind subscribers to participate. Offer a coupon just to your newsletter readers. Provide a coupon code to use online or a printable coupon that can be used in-store. When you have a new product coming in, tell your customers about it.
Build the hype by providing availability, release dates, and options like sizes and colors that are available. Allow subscribers to forward your newsletter to a friend, and if they subscribe to your list, send the customers a special deal or discount for helping you grow your list. After all, referrals are always welcome. Loosen the tie or kick off your heels. Create some out-of-the-box content too with these ideas:. Are you personalizing emails? Personalization works, so why not up your game with a personalized image?
Pinpointe has a partnership with NiftyImages that gives brands the power to create personalized images like these:. For example, a bar can write an article on National Margarita Day and offer a discount. Did your company host a Halloween costume party? Are you hosting an Evening with Santa? At some point, crazy weather will impact your area. Consider writing about it and how it impacted your business. Maybe create animated GIFs that show employees shoveling, for example.
Be careful, though. You want subscribers looking for your newsletter. Previous Marketing Webinars. Following that line of thinking, here are a few ideas: 1. If 10 items feels like too big of a commitment, you can scale it down to five or three.
Moz does a great roundup of its top 10 blog articles and simply lists the titles in this basic yet effective newsletter: 3.
Add an infographic Use a tool like Canva to create a cool infographic for your newsletter. Remind subscribers about a poll or survey Surveys can help small businesses collect valuable information, but response rates can often be lackluster. Customer reviews Collect a few customer reviews on a specific product and share them in your newsletter. Case studies Do you have case studies on your website?
Podcasts Podcasts are gaining popularity. Free resources Have you created an eBook, white paper, or guide? Your newsletter can be personal, light hearted and you should always bring it back to what you do — after all, people signed up to your newsletter because they are interested in hearing about what your company is up to!
Example: When Google made it more important for sites to be responsive, we created 3 blog posts and a sent this newsletter to help people overcome their confusion and fears about their sites dissapearing from the internet!
It was part of a campaign to get more clients to come back and get us to redo their websites to be responsive! As well as sharing interesting information your newsletter is also the perfect platform to encourage people to do something, be it signing up for an event with a discount or simply directing them to view the latest work on your website. Always encourage and direct people to get involved with what you do. What are social media profiles for — networking and communicating of course!
Have a look at all our earlier newsletters by visiting this page.
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