All businesses aim to engage with their customers to develop lasting relationships, ensure repeat business, and drive growth in sales. Integrated marketing strategies include multiple tools that are designed to do just this. Digital newsletters sent via email are an important aspect of any marketing strategy, but they are often overlooked or forgotten.
Compared to social media posts, email newsletters are better tools for retaining customers as well as communicating directly with them. That’s because social media is typically overcrowded with different messages, and many become overlooked or missed entirely. But email newsletters are different because people usually retain their email addresses for many years, so if you have someone subscribed, you’re very likely to have your message reaches them.
Discover 7 tips to create effective email newsletters, which you can use to engage with your customers and keep them as loyal brand supporters and help drive more sales.
1. Share informative content
Your newsletters should contain relevant and informative content that appeals to your customers and engage them. If not, your email will likely be ignored.
The following are some ideas of informative content that you could include in your newsletter to make it more effective:
- Include videos and embed media such as webinars
- Share links to engaging blog posts
- Share free tips and tutorials that are useful and valuable
- Share current news about your activities like new products, awards, or events
- Share reviews of new projects or products
While there are many more, these are just a few ideas of the type of content you could include. It’s a good idea to review content strategy based on the feedback you receive and brainstorm content ideas before launching your email campaign.
Having relevant, interesting, unique, and informative content will help avoid situations where customers unsubscribe. Try to make your newsletters exciting, so your customers look forward to receiving them.
2. Avoid sales pitches
You want to avoid making your newsletter sound like a sales pitch because that will put people off, which will see many hitting the unsubscribe button.
While you ultimately want to generate sales, you need to avoid an overly sales-focused copy. If your content is informative, relevant, and captivating with a clear call to action, your readers should understand your products and services and be more inclined to share the content on social media.
If you are running a promotion, provide a brief overview with a link for further information so if someone is interested, they can read more about it. Subtlety goes a long way.
3. Use clear and simple language
If your newsletter is full of industry-specific, technical jargon, it may exclude many readers from being able to understand what it’s about, which can alienate people and put them off from reading your newsletters in the future. Use language that’s easy to understand with short sentences and simple content. Don’t assume that your readers understand what all the abbreviations and technical terms mean. If in doubt, spell them out.
It’s also critical that you proofread your content before disseminating it to check for any grammatical and spelling errors because your newsletter is a reflection of your brand, and if you’re seen making careless errors, what does that say about your business? Try to get several people to look over the email for errors and consistency, which may also elicit some great ideas for future editions.
Your headlines are important and should be concise and catchy to draw the attention of your readers, as people often scan for bits of information that interests them most.
4. Use images and embedded videos
Most people don’t read the entire newsletter. Instead, they scan the content and enjoy having visual cues that complement the text. That’s why having images in your newsletter can make it more appealing and engaging for people to read. It’s critical to pick the right type of photo to accompany the text, and there are many places where you can source free online stock images, which makes it easy to have professional-looking photographs included in your newsletter.
5. Use an eye-catching design
Not only should the newsletter have great content, but it should also be well-designed and have an easy-to-digest layout. The design should also reflect your brand identity. There are loads of free newsletter templates to choose from online, which makes it easier to find something suitable without having to design one yourself.
Using a template for your newsletter also means that you can re-use the same template each time by simply dropping new content and images into the template. Having a newsletter template also helps you create consistency, which is important in messaging and communication.
6. Include a call to action
In addition to providing valuable informational content for your readers, you also want to prompt them to take some kind of action. It’s best to have one clear call to action rather than several (which can be overwhelming and confusing), such as calling you, visiting your website, submitting a form, subscribing, or emailing you.
7. Track results and metrics
By using an emailing system that tracks post-send metrics like how many people opened the email, how many clicked on different links, or how many unsubscribed, you can gather significant information about customer preferences and devise a way to better communicate with different customers.
This feedback will help you design a better layout, write more engaging content, and identify an optimal time to send out emails.
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