Email newsletters are an excellent strategy to keep in touch with your customer base and promote your products or services.
But many businesses don’t realize how much work goes into creating a successful newsletter. Continue reading to learn the best practices for preparing content for your business newsletter and setting up a system that consistently delivers an email your customers look forward to receiving. We will explain how to create content, develop the design, what software to use, database management tips, the financial benefits, how frequently you should send an email, and how to stay compliant. Follow these tips, and you’ll be on your way to creating a successful email newsletter that will help grow your business!
How to create content for your email newsletter
The first step is to determine the purpose of your newsletter. Are you trying to advertise a new product or service?
Keep customers up-to-date on what’s happening with your company. Drive traffic to your website or blog? Once you have identified the objective of your newsletter, you can start brainstorming content ideas that will support that goal.
If you are having trouble coming up with ideas, consider what topics would interest your target audience. What questions do your current customers have that you can help answer? What information would be helpful to them? You can also look through your website or blog archives for content that would be appropriate for your newsletter.
Once you put together your list of potential topics, it’s time to start writing! If you’re not a strong writer, consider hiring someone to help you with this part of the process. Well-written content is essential to encourage people to read it.
Designing your email newsletter
The design of your newsletter is just as important as the content. After all, you want people to open and read your newsletter.
When designing your newsletter, it is important to consider the following:
- Make sure the design is clean and easy to read. No one wants to try to make sense of a cluttered, messy email. Use one or two fonts and plenty of white space to make the email easy on the eyes.
- Sparingly use images. Overdoing it with images can make your email look like spam and cause problems if people have image blocking turned on in their email client.
- Use a responsive design. Email newsletters need to look good on both desktop and mobile devices.
- Include a call to action. Email newsletters are a great way to drive traffic to your website or blog, so make sure you tell people where they can go to learn more.
When choosing an email marketing program, there are a few things you should keep in mind:
- How easy is the software to use? You don’t want something so complicated that it takes forever to create each newsletter.
- What kind of support does the company offer? If you run into problems, you want to be able to get help from the company quickly.
- How much does the software cost? You don’t want to overspend on your email marketing program, but it is important not to go too cheap and end up with something that doesn’t meet your needs.
- Do you need marketing automation features? If yes, consider using Sharpspring or another software that can provide a complete marketing automation suite.
- Is integration to your CRM essential? Make sure all email data can be integrated easily into your CRM if needed.
Contact database management tips
Once your email newsletter is set up, it’s time to start building your contact database. These contacts will be the recipients of your newsletter, so it’s crucial to ensure that it’s well-managed. Here are a few tips for managing your contact database:
- Keep track of how people are subscribing to your newsletter. This can be through a sign-up form on your website, at events, or other ways. Make sure you are collecting all of the relevant information from each person who subscribes.
- Keep track of when people unsubscribe from your newsletter. You don’t want to keep emailing people who aren’t interested in receiving them. Most email marketing software should have a feature to automate this process.
- Segment your list. This process means dividing your subscribers up into groups based on specific criteria. For example, you might segment by location, industry, or company size. List segmentation will allow you to send targeted content more likely to interest each group.
- Keep your contact information up to date. Email addresses and other contact information change constantly, so updating your list is necessary. Email verification processes are essential to keeping a well-maintained database.
When it comes to sending out your email newsletter, there are a few things you should keep in mind:
- Test, test, test! Before sending your newsletter to your entire list, please send it to yourself and a few other people first to ensure everything looks correct and all the links work.
- The best time to send an email newsletter is Tuesday or Wednesday. Avoid Mondays, when people are just getting back into the swing of things after the weekend, and don’t send on Fridays when people are more likely to take off early for the weekend.
- Test different times to see what works best for your audience. Some people prefer to get their email first thing in the morning, while others prefer to receive it later in the day.
- If you have global subscribers, consider time zones when you send your emails. You don’t want to accidentally wake people up in the middle of the night with an email!
- Timing isn’t everything – it’s also essential to ensure you’re not bombarding your subscribers with too many emails. People will quickly get overwhelmed and unsubscribe if you send out multiple weekly newsletters.
What are the financial benefits of sending an email newsletter?
When done correctly, email newsletters can be a cost-effective way to connect with your audience and promote your business. Email marketing software is typically much less expensive than other marketing channels like print, digital ads, or television advertising. And, if you already have a database of customers’ email addresses, there’s no additional cost to reach out to them.
Additionally, email newsletters allow you to track how many people are opening and clicking through on the links in your newsletter. This data can be valuable in understanding what content resonates with your audience and what doesn’t to help adjust future newsletters to ensure they’re more successful.
We find that email newsletters are also an excellent way to educate your customer base on all of your offerings. Many customers will only be aware of the one thing they purchase from you and, in many cases, will be unaware of all the other ways they can do business with you; an email newsletter is a great way to get cross sales.
What are some common mistakes people make when sending out email newsletters?
One of the most common mistakes people make when sending email newsletters is failing to proofread their content. Always read over your newsletter before hitting send – a few errors can make you look unprofessional and damage your reputation.
Another mistake is not segmenting your audience. Email marketing software allows you to segment your subscribers into different groups to send targeted content relevant to them. For example, you might have one group for customers who’ve purchased in the past month and another for those who haven’t purchased anything in six months. By sending targeted content, you’re more likely to engage your readers and encourage them to buy from you.
Additionally, avoid using too much text in your email newsletters. People are more likely to skim emails than read them word for word, so make sure your content is easy to scan. Write short paragraphs, headlines, and bullet points to break up your text and make it easier to read.
Finally, please test your email before you send it out! Test different subject lines, images, and call-to-actions to see what gets the best results. Email marketing software like Sharpspring allows you to A/B test your emails so you can constantly improve your open and click-through rates.
Email newsletters are an excellent way to connect with your audience – but only if they’re done correctly. Following the best practices outlined in this article can ensure your email newsletter is successful.
If you need assistance, we have a team of email newsletter experts to help you achieve your goals. Click Here to learn more about our services at Cleartail Marketing and watch video testimonials from our clients. Please make sure to contact us if you have any questions!
