An e-newsletter, or email newsletter, is a regularly distributed electronic publication that is generally about one main topic of interest for its subscribers. A great email newsletter can work wonders for your business as they can be relatively low cost but, if executed correctly, could help increase leads, sales and engagement for your business.
There’s three key reasons why you should consider an email newsletter:
- Generate leads
- Up-sell and cross-sell services and products
- Increase customer lifetime value and develop lasting relationships
So you’ve committed to an e-newsletter – but how do you make it stand out?
Great design and branding
It’s crucial that your e-newsletter’s design is representative of your business and visually interesting. Whether light-hearted, humorous or formal, it’s important that your audience recognises that the email is from you. If your email is recognised, trusted and expected, it will encourage readers to click ‘open’!
Focus!
Without focus, your email can become cluttered. Instead of trying to communicate every aspect of your business, concentrate on providing the reader with something concise and easy to digest. You run the risk of losing your reader’s attention if you overwhelm them with information so pick a key theme, message or purpose for each e-newsletter.
Clear calls to action
By focusing on one clear message for each e-newsletter it will be easier for you to develop strong calls to action (CTA). Don’t bombard your readers with multiple CTAs – instead draw attention to a few buttons or links to relevant content or web pages. This will also help when analysing the success of a particular campaign and how well your audience has responded to specific messages.
Creative subject lines
You only have a few seconds to grab the attention of your readers so ensure your subject line is eye-catching. Although consistency can be great for building customer expectations, a repetitive subject line can become boring and lead customers to ignore, delete or, at worst, unsubscribe from your emails.
Testing, testing
You’re creating what you think is a great email, but it’s just not getting the traction you were expecting. What can you do? Test! There’s no ‘one size fits all’ for email marketing and testing is a great way of understanding the most, and least, effective parts of your e-newsletter. You can try alternative copy, subject lines, images and colours, or see if your emails have more impact on different days or times of day. Small changes can be significant so start simple, test one element at a time and listen to the results!
Personalisation is powerful!
Your readers have names and it’s important that you address them as humans, not numbers on a list. Similarly, it’s key for your readers to feel a personal connection with your business. By injecting some personality into your emails, you can engage your readers on a personal level and begin to develop real, lasting relationships.
Whether you’re in the process of setting up a newsletter or looking to give it a boost, these 6 tips should set you on the road to creating exciting and effective e-newsletters.
If you’re looking for more advice on making the most of your online marketing, take a look at this easy list of tips and pointers!