Make the Most of Your Email Newsletters

Email newsletters help you keep in touch with your customer base – but to keep subscribers engaged over time, you need compelling content. With a mixture of exciting news, great offers, fun content and more, newsletters can work really well for your business. Read our top tips to keep your customers clicking.

Why Send Newsletters?

Newsletters shouldn’t just be there to sell, but they certainly help. In 2015, 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase based on a promotional email, and with over 4.3 billion email accounts in existence today, that’s a lot of potential sales. People lead busy lives, and you can’t always rely on return business without a few little prompts. This is where newsletters can work their magic.

It’s so important to build real trust with subscribers, and to keep their needs at the heart of what you send. Do this, and you will build strong, long-term relationships that keep customers coming back for more. The opportunities are unmissable!

Are Newsletters Right For Your Business?

People often question whether newsletters will work for their business. MailChimp, a leading email service, provided a breakdown of email open and click-through rates by sector to help you decide whether email newsletters can be useful for you. If you’re still unsure, think about what you and your customers want and whether newsletters could help achieve this.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that email works with other channels too – e.g. social media. In fact, newsletters with social sharing buttons reportedly have a 158% higher click-through rate! Recent studies even suggest that email is the second most effective channel for accomplishing marketing goals – putting it ahead of social marketing.

Things to Consider

Before thinking about email content, you need a subscriber list in place. This includes becoming whitelisted so that your newsletters don’t head straight to subscribers’ junk mail.

Once you have your contacts, you need to send newsletters that attract their attention. Bear in mind that the average person has to sift through a long list of emails!

Target Audience

Like with any piece of marketing, you need to know your targeted audience. Research what they want, not just what you want to tell them. This will better your chances of keeping them as subscribers. If you are a cosmetics business, your readers may want special offers and advice on how to use your products.

Your customers know you’re the expert, so you don’t need to prove it with complex language. Simplify everything and keep text to a minimum to keep readers engaged – the easier to read, the better.

Engaging Content

You need to create content that keeps your customers wanting more. Only a small percentage of your content should be promotional – no-one likes to read a sales pitch!

It goes without saying that you need to achieve your business’s goals too, but you need to find the right balance between your goals and your customers’ interests. Include tips, industry news, exclusive content and special promotions to spark their interest.

Relevant Subject Matter

Think about your personal inbox: would you bother opening a message with a subject line that simply says ‘June Newsletter’? Probably not! You’ll need to think about creating headlines that will intrigue your subscribers and encourage them to open the email.

For every subscriber that ignores your email, you move one step away from achieving your goal. Spend time to market your newsletter creatively in under 50 words. However, don’t get too carried away! Email content that doesn’t reflect its subject line will harm your trustworthiness and result in unsubscribes.

You can also split your recipients into two groups by A/B split testing, where each group receives a different version of your newsletter.

By tracking which gets the best response, you can optimise future content to receive more engagement.

Call-to-Action

Your newsletter needs to be clear in what it’s trying to achieve. You can do this with a call-to-action (CTA), which could be a clickable button with ‘Sign up today’ to guide your customers’ actions.

Try to use one main CTA that your newsletter is based around, alongside less prominent ones. For example, introduce a link to your new product line before your latest blog posts. You should guide your customers’ decisions, and your newsletter should link to appropriate landing pages.

Create a Connection

Personalise your communication to make it as direct as possible. It’s recommended to use recipients’ names and even acknowledge their previous orders.

Readers respond well to real faces, so you could even include pictures of the marketing manager or CEO with a signature. Also, consider using a conversational tone and pronouns like ‘I’ and ‘we’.

Short and Frequent

Let’s be honest, who has the time for long emails? Readers want information quickly, so don’t pad out your newsletter just for the sake of it.

Keep your newsletters to the point and only include content that benefits both you and the customer. A small sales pitch is fine, but your subscriber list will plummet if your emails are too salesy.

Not only length, but also how often you send your newsletters can affect your success. Send them too often, and you’ll annoy readers. Send too infrequently, and they’ll forget you even exist. Get the balance right to stay in people’s minds – and for the right reason!

Before You Click Send…

When it comes to email newsletters, you can’t check enough! Test your email for content, design, links and images. You’ll also need to make sure your design is mobile-friendly, so check from various devices. Ensure that all images have alt text – if not, they may not load and could make the email unreadable.

The Law

Some newsletters may not only be annoying for subscribers but can also break the law. You heard correctly – there are laws in place for bad newsletter practices!

Importantly, you must give readers the opportunity to opt out of newsletters with every email. Avoid frustration by offering this in a highly visible position. Also, recipients must agree for you to send offers and promotions to them in the first place.

Think Ahead

Ideally, you should be sending newsletters at least once a month, and keeping an eye on how your customers are interacting with them. You should also check what content your subscribers are responding to – this should inform and improve your future newsletters.

Do you need help with generating content that will engage your customers? Our expert content writers can help. Contact us at Mitra today.