The newsletter is a type of informative Email with a frequency of shots, whose message is not focused on a specific offer and, unlike promotional emails, can present a greater scope of interests. Generally, the newsletter is the gateway for Email Marketing.
Newsletters are a very good communication option to foster the relationship with customers and prospects in a lighter and closer way.
Contrary to promotional emails, the newsletter is not focused on a specific offer and can present a broader scope of interests.
It is possible, in one of the calls, to promote a product for those who are in an advanced moment of purchase and, likewise, be relevant to those who are in another stage of the sales funnel and are only interested in the articles and tips .
In addition to that, by always repeating a content organization pattern, they can be produced without great difficulties.
All this can thus generate a very good return, as long as the quality is always maintained.
Index of contents:
- 7 tips to create a quality Newsletter
- Checklist: what you should review before sending a newsletter
- How to create engaging content for your newsletters
7 tips to create a quality Newsletter
Next, we are going to give some tips so that you can be more effective in your newsletters.
1. Only send if it's really relevant
Since the main objective of the newsletter is to keep the audience closest to your business, the first premise is that you have quality content to offer.
Your company should know what type of issue is most interesting in the list. Topics that answer the biggest questions of potential customers in your area of activity will attract more than simply promoting your product.
The more information you have about your readers' preferences, the better. Ideally, the message should be as segmented as possible. A well-produced newsletter with rigorously selected content tends to become a great long-term asset.
2. Make it “scannable” content
If you have multiple topics to promote, keep the calls well separated and organized, highlighting the main points.
In the case of larger texts, keep only an introduction or summary with a link to the full content available on the website.
This will guarantee a shorter newsletter and allow you to discover, through clicks, what were the contents that attracted the most attention.
3. Select the subject of the message and the sender well
Did you know that the person responsible for a good click-through rate is the subject of the message?
So be prepared to spend some time crafting a compelling call. The challenge is: to be concise, objective, and mainly relevant to the reader.
One option is to use the most important text call you selected for the newsletter. That tends to increase the click-through rate on this article. Another is to use creativity and highlight the topic in a general way in one sentence only.
A fundamental issue is that the name of your company is present in the sender of the email. If the recipient already has confidence in your business, displaying the name will make the message more attractive.
4. Bet on the simplicity of the layout
The HTML of an email cannot be approached in the same way as the HTML of a website.
The complexity of creating a template greatly increases the chances of problems in the way each service renders the message and layout failure becomes more frequent.
On top of that, offering various options in a loosely defined sequence can also confuse the user and decrease the number of clicks. Keeping it simple in CSS and using a simple table layout is the best option.
5. Be careful when using images
Avoid condensing your newsletter into just one image, as most email services are standardized to block display.
This makes it difficult to view and the user needs to click on an authorization to get to know what the content of that email is. That "barrier" ends up reducing the results quite a bit.
When using images throughout the HTML, take care to use the ALT attribute correctly, so that the reader knows what it is about in case they are not displayed.
Also, remember to ensure that the images are on your own server.
Using a free image hosting service is not recommended for 2 reasons. The first is that this type of service is widely used by spammers and can reduce the reliability of your message.
The second is that many times these services block the display of images in emails for not being able to deal with a high amount of traffic. In this way, your potential client does not get to see what the company sent.
6. Always measure the results to find the points of improvement
Take advantage of the analysis offered by Email Marketing services to evaluate the effectiveness of your newsletters.
The open rate will help identify the best delivery times, the effectiveness of the selected subject, and how relevant your business has been over time.
The clicks on their part will help to show the issues that attracted the most attention and can represent interesting content for your audience.
All this makes it possible to optimize campaigns and thus provide a greater return on investment.
7. Do a lot of tests
Do not think that the work ends when the newsletter is finished.
Testing before sending is very important. Send the message to yourself, and to friends, and in short, try in all possible ways.
Check the main email servers on your list and try all the main ones.
Generally, e-mails from Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, UOL, or BOL, as well as software such as Outlook 2003 and 2007, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Apple Mail are among the most relevant in Latin America.
A good option is to use the website litmus.com, which shows the display of emails in different email services. These tests will help ensure that the layout is not broken according to the email service.
But try beyond that. Search for various content types, email subject lines, and delivery times to identify which options deliver the best results for your business.
Checklist: what you should review before sending an Informative Bulletin
Generally, newsletters are sent to the entire contact base regularly and usually offer a wide variety of content.
For this reason, the newsletter is a type of email that reaches Leads at all levels of the sales funnel and at different times of purchase.
If your company already has a blog with frequent content, the newsletter is an excellent way to improve or increase the reach of the content, as well as being easy to create.
However, although its production is not difficult, there are many stages to complete, from selecting the material that must be sent to shooting it for your base.
For this reason, we created a checklist with the main steps you must follow before launching your newsletters.
Do you want a practical version of that checklist? Download our checklist for Email Marketing Campaigns :
1. Planning
Just like a promotional email, the newsletter needs planning.
First, choose a name for the campaign. That name should, where possible, identify key features of the newsletter, so everyone working on creating this campaign knows at least what the topic is.
This is especially important if you have more than one newsletter that is sent on different frequencies, with different content, and for different bases.
Then, determine which buyer person (or buyer personas) you will send the newsletter to. This will determine the content you will select for that email.
Choose the segmentation for which you are going to send the newsletter. This must match the characteristics of the Lead (their age, for example) and/or some behavior they had on your site or blog (for example, downloading an eBook).
Now is the time to make the content selection. One piece of advice is to create campaigns with content from different stages of purchase for each buyer persona.
2. Calendar
This is the best moment to define the day and time of the shipment. Since there is no rule on the best day or time, you should ideally try a few variations and see which one best suits your business.
Once you have that definition, keep sending frequency. After all, the newsletter is a recurring campaign.
3. Content
Now is the time to create the content. You can start by creating an outline, that is, a structure with the issues of the newsletter and the content that will be addressed in those issues.
Next, develop the texts of the email – for example, the opening text and a short summary of each content that is offered.
Next, think of a few options for the email title (5 or so) and select the one that you think is the best. Finally, submit the text for review.
4. Email design
Now you are going to create the design of the newsletter, that is, the arrangement of the contents in a more graphic way. If you don't know how to do it, you can hire a professional to create it. Remember that the newsletter must be formatted in HTML.
You can also use a tool that makes it possible to create designs quickly, such as RD Station Marketing. The software gives you the option to create your own newsletters in a few steps.
Then review everything together (the design with the final content). A few points to check: Does the email subject appear completely in the inbox (try to limit it to a maximum of 50 characters)? Do images work with alt text? Are there broken images? Do all the links work? Are there misspellings?
If there is any error, please correct it. When everything is correct, go to the next stage.
5. Shipping
Shipping time. Now, you must create the segmentation indicated in the planning.
A good idea is to use the dynamic lists to facilitate the next shipments of the newsletter. Complete the setup and schedule the shipment.
6. Analysis
Before concluding the work with that newsletter, you must analyze the results. Some metrics that you can evaluate are:
- Open Rate (number of people who opened the message divided by the number of people who received it): did it go up or down compared to the last campaign? What to do next?
- Click-through rate (number of clicks on a link in the newsletter divided by the number of people who received it): did it go up or down compared to the last campaign? What to do next?
- Conversion Rate (people who made a conversion from the newsletter): how many people met the objective defined in the planning?
Bonus: Do you want a practical checklist to use in your company?
If you fulfilled all these steps, your newsletter-sending process is complete. In summary, the process is composed of:
Planning
- buyer persona
- Segmentation
- Content
Calendar
- Define the day and time of shipment
Content
- create an outline
- Produce email texts
- Think of 5 different subjects (email title) and select 1
- Revision
Email Design
- Create design thinking about the structure of the content
- Review the design with the final content
- Make a test shipment and verify:
- Email Subject
- Images
- links
- Content
Shipment
- Create the segmentation according to the plan
- Conclude campaign setup and schedule delivery
Analysis
- Open Rate
- Click Rate
- Conversion rate
We also created a handy checklist that you can use in other types of campaigns, like promotional mail and nurturing flows, which have different processes.
The checklist has a digital version – in which you can mark the points that have already been completed directly in your web browser – and a version for printing:
How to create engaging content for your newsletters
Newsletters are a basic tool within a content plan. Due to its characteristics, we can use the scenario to our advantage to promote subscriber conversions.
It is an intimate channel, which allows us to send personalized content and, depending on the design, take the user exactly where we want them to go and that is powerfully good. The problem comes when you don't even want to read the content inside the newsletter.
For this reason, we will tell you some techniques and keys to creating attractive content for your newsletters.
First of all, do not try to ignore this important channel, much less downplay it, since different specialists have affirmed the impact that Email Marketing has within a Digital Marketing strategy .
And then how to create attractive content that returns that ROI to me with the use of newsletters?
To learn more about effective Email Marketing strategies, we recommend reading the eBook: Guide to Email Marketing in Practice .
Techniques to consider when creating engaging content for your newsletters
Keep in mind the following:
All content, whether on social networks, newsletters or blogs, must respect 3 simple rules:
Valuable ⇢ Is it related to the interests of the subscriber? This can be from a common theme that has to do with your commercial activity, to a promotion for Father's Day, in the case of eCommerce .
Interesting ⇢ As the owner of your own business, ask yourself: does it cause me to read my own newsletter? When I talk about interest, we mean delighting the subscriber.
Relevant ⇢ Is the topic that you have dealt with in each newsletter related to the interests of the subscriber?
These 3 basic rules will help you create engaging content for your newsletters; in the creation of each one, review them and give answers to the questions of each aspect.
But that's not all, you will also have to take care of the following:
Keep a balance leaning towards less promotional newsletters
Unless you are an eCommerce who has determined that newsletters help you improve sales and subscribers react well to promotions, try to avoid sending as many promotions as possible.
It is a universal law since Inbound Marketing appeared in our lives: more useful content, less direct sales.
It is a fairly general rule and not everyone should follow it, but if in your case you notice that subscribers are not reacting to your direct sales, change the weight of the scale and tilt it towards educational, entertaining, and valuable content, as I mentioned at the beginning.
Everything in the digital realm is determined after trial and error. You can try sending a newsletter chain that is 20% promotion and 80% educational content, or if you are an eCommerce, you can reverse the numbers.
That is, the idea is that you keep trying until you get that personal magic formula.
You don't necessarily have to talk only about yourself
For some time we have been hearing more about the terms coworking, working together, collaborators, etc. That content that not only talks about you is also good to include.
Especially if you are a business that sells services, for example, including quotes about opinion leaders within your industry is positive.
SEMrush is an example of this. From time to time they promote webinars with industry leaders, as well as allow guest posts and promote them through their newsletters.
Observe:
That not only gives the subscriber a bit of variety but also speaks well of the business.
Even though he is a benchmark in the industry, he likes to share the opinions of other important figures, who likewise handle the subject well.
Allowing this type of action helps you cover topics of interest within your audience, but that you may not fully handle.
Take ownership of local events
In each country, region, or town some traditions and passions unite their entire community. For example, the famous Day of the Dead in Mexico, is a tradition that highlights the culture of an entire country. Colombia, for its part, celebrates the day of love and friendship, a version of Valentine's Day but which occurs in September.
That is, depending on the nature of your business, you can analyze whether to take advantage of these dates or events to generate fresh and impactful content.
If you have any way of connecting your business to the traditions I'm talking about, take advantage of that opportunity. We are sure that they can help you entertain your subscribers and bring a higher opening rate.
keep it short
If the initial intention of some newsletters is to increase website traffic, then you have to try to be as concise as possible in the content that you are displaying in the email.
Diverting attention can only cause the subscriber not to reach the website and that is wrong. Look at this example:
The intention of this newsletter is clearly to lead the subscriber to a new conversion: downloading a guide. Your text is really concise and allows the reader's attention to stay on your CTA .
Take care of the email subject
In fact, it all starts here. The subject can say a lot or nothing about the content of the email and, if it is not good enough, the recipient of the message will directly click on the unsubscribe button. But, you don't want that, do you?
Think a little about the words that would be more appropriate to describe the content of the newsletter. Go beyond “what we have for you this month”. That's boring, classic, and unimpressive.
The immense universe of Digital Marketing brings with it a series of manuals to direct your business, but it all depends on how you interpret it in your favor.
If you already have an established subscriber base, start playing with it to see what works best for you.
Do you want to have access to more quality content to help you develop your strategies? Get to know RD Station's library of free materials .
This post was originally published in August 2017 and updated in Jan 2023.
