Right now, you are in one of two places with your brand. You either have a successful company with a growing clientele, or you’re working toward making your brand recognizable in the industry. Either way, there’s one thing that all business owners always attempt to achieve – attract more people and generate higher revenue.
One great way of doing this is via email marketing or, more specifically, newsletters. More and more businesses today use newsletters to keep current customers engaged, re-engage past customers, and attract the target audience.
With the right email list and a great newsletter, you can achieve a lot.
Why Do You Need Newsletters?
Think of it this way. You saw this article and something prompted you to click on it. Whether it was the headline’s message, some points you saw while you scanned through the content, or a referral from other sites – this is something of interest to you.
That’s exactly what you strive to achieve with your newsletters – spike the interest in those who receive it.
According to SmartInsight’s research, newsletters earn a 22% open rate compared to a fraction of this number for most social media channels. This rate goes even higher for renowned brands with quality newsletter content. For example, the newsletters by the Washington Post enjoy a 30% open rate.
You are probably thinking: is this really more frequented than social media? Even today when social media is trending more than ever, email marketing remains one of the best tools for attracting leads. There might be billions using social media, but still, most people will open their email daily, and might not get the time to search on social media.
Optin Monster’s data says it all: 91% of people check and use their email on a daily basis. Only 57% use Facebook daily.
This makes email marketing, including newsletters, one of the strongest tools you have for growing your brand.
Now that you have the numbers, it’s time to learn some actionable tips on how to boost your newsletters’ quality.
Tips For More Successful Newsletter Creation
Below you will find 5 actionable tips on how to create successful newsletters with minimal effort and time.
1. Use Smart Tools To Speed Up The Process – And Make It Simpler
Even if you are a highly creative person with tons of experience in newsletter making, you might struggle with time restrictions or fight a writer’s block. Your email marketing should not suffer because of it. Thankfully, technology has provided marketers with an amazing solution. You can now use tools and templates to create amazing emails with minimal effort.
From great newsletter introductions to amazing creative flow in the content, tools like Flodesk can be life-saving for marketers and business owners. This is the fastest and best way to create amazing, unique newsletters whenever you need them.
Thanks to Flodesk, users can now design emails that are optimized for all devices. This way, when mobile users check their message from your brand, they can see it without trouble. Flodeskis, right now, the best-rated email builder with intuitive features and creative templates.
Not only can you use this tool to create newsletters, but you can also use it to spread them around. It can be connected through Zapier with various apps, integrated directly with Shopify, and linked to social media pages. You can also create email marketing automation that will take care of your content while you work or rest.
2. Create Powerful Subject Lines
Well, duh! To those who’ve worked on emails before, this sounds like the most obvious thing. However, very few spend more than a few minutes on the subject line. They are too busy or fail to understand the enormous importance of this part.
Let’s look at some statistics. It is calculated that 69% of email recipients report an email as spam after reading the subject line. This means that, if your subject line is bad, not only will people stay away from your message, but they’ll also report it.
This is far from good for your brand and email campaign. The more people do this, the higher the chances of your message arriving in other people’s spam mail.
Such numbers certainly make this a highly important part. So, what can you do to boost your subject lines and avoid all these problems? Here are a few tips:
· Keep the target audience in mind. Who are your emails for? Use the research of your buyer persona and the data you have on existing customers to craft your newsletter. This will show you what can catch their eye so that you can use it first; as well as what pushes them away, so that you can avoid it altogether.
· Make it descriptive and clear. People expect to know what an email is about before they open it. Most won’t give it a chance if they are unsure of what it contains. While writing ‘newsletter’ is certainly not engaging enough, you shouldn’t go overboard and write a full description. Less than 50 characters are perfectly enough to grab their attention – and share the purpose.
· Test your subject lines. CampaignTesting describes not A/B testing of subject lines as “leaving money on the table”. You can perform all sorts of testing to decide on the length, offers included, emojis if applicable, and personalization of the line you’re considering.
3. Pick The Perfect Timing
Timing is crucial in sending newsletters. When you have it ready to be sent, think carefully about when you are sending it out. Completing this task can be challenging, and it might tempt you to send it as soon as possible. But, that’s not a wise idea since people don’t stick around at all times to read newsletters.
There’s also no one-size-fits-all time to do this. The ideal time will depend on your newsletter content, your audience, etc. Instead of trying to figure out when people use their email and are most likely to read newsletters based on user data, you can experiment to find the optimal time.
After all, many people will see the email as soon as you send it. Testing different times can show you which is the best time for them to actually read it.
4. Keep It Personal
In the newsletter, you’re writing on behalf of your organization. This puts the focus on the consumer – the person who will read the email and use your products or services. It’s why personalization is a great tip – people respond much better to personalized content.
How do we know this?
Data shows that personalized emails deliver 6 times higher transaction rates compared to non-personalized messages. To be more, 82% of marketers report an open rate increase based on email personalization.
There are many great ways of personalizing a newsletter or an email. Here are some:
· If you know the person’s name, add it to the subject line
· Geotarget the emails i.e. send them out during thunderstorms and blizzards when people are more likely to stay in and check their phone (check out this newsletter by Seamless)
· Celebrate anniversaries from the day when a person became your customer or subscribed to the newsletter. You already know the date and time, and this can be easily automated. It’s a great way to remind them of your brand, especially if you add a bit of a gift or coupon as an incentive
5. Pick Your Colors Carefully
Did you know that there are currently over 300 million people around the globe who are color-blind? This makes it highly likely that some of your targeted audience will have difficulty distinguishing between greens and reds. Whatever you’re designing, including that newsletter, you need to make sure that it is clear and appealing to all.
This is greatly determined by color. Using the wrong color schemes and combinations can destroy your newsletter regardless of how great its content and message are. If you put hardly readable fonts and content on a messy background, people will struggle to see it. They’ll give up before they give it a second glance.
Ideally, you should use starkly contrasting colors and make sure that people can read everything and see the difference. You should also stick to traditional, commonly used and professional fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, and Cambria to make the content more readable for your audience.
Here is a useful Venngage color chart to help you out.
Conclusion
Email marketing has been too important for a very long time. With the growth in email usage, it’s safe to say this – email is here to stay. This means that sending out newsletters to a carefully collected email list is one of your best chances to grow the business and make the brand more recognizable. Still, creating these can be a hassle unless you know who to turn to for help – or what to focus on. Hopefully, this guide helped you with both. Good luck!
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