4 Ways to Create Newsletters People Actually Read

Your business might be the perfect candidate for email newsletters. And, you might be smart to begin sending one out. Email marketing is a cost-efficient way to drive leads to your site, and sending a newsletter can help you build relationships with customers. However, if you’re going to begin sending out an email newsletter, you have to put some real thought into the look, feel, and accessibility of your newsletter. It isn’t as simple as it looks.

Be a pro

You probably know by now that every piece of content your business pushes out is scrutinized and judged. Your branding extends over all platforms, and this includes email. Your newsletter can’t look like it was slapped together. It might seem simple, but editing your newsletter and ensuring it has no typos or technical errors (like broken links) is important to your company’s image.

Part of being professional is also being timely. If you send your newsletter every Monday, your readers will come to expect an update every Monday. You need to be prepared to be consistent and think ahead if you’re going to send out an email newsletter.

Aim to educate

If you decide to write an email newsletter, you should aim for it to educate your contacts and help them explore more of your site. A newsletter is not meant to be a pushy marketing message (well, none of your marketing messages should be pushy, actually). Instead, a newsletter should let contacts know what’s going on with your business and gently offer them something new to read that’s interesting to them. You don’t want to continually resend the same content to your subscribers: that will only result in your readers being bored and annoyed by your messages, and they’ll probably unsubscribe.

Make it relevant

Whether your buyer persona would like downloadable offers, a list of new blogs, or the dates of upcoming events, make sure to keep them in mind when creating your newsletter. Think of the devices used to read your newsletter, what interests your personas, and what your company’s newsletter could do to benefit them. In fact, depending on how distinct your buyer personas are, you might even consider segmentation and sending several different newsletters to different groupings of contacts.

Don’t overwhelm

No one likes getting a ton of unwanted emails. Talk to your contacts and base your schedule off what they want/need. If they check their emails from their phones on their lunch break, maybe sending a responsive message around 11AM is ideal. You need to be conscious of the needs of your contacts. Remember, the consumer is always more important than the marketer, and you must start thinking like a consumer to get your message out.

You also must consider the content of your newsletter when thinking of overwhelming a contact. Keeping your content minimal but high quality will keep your readers coming back for more. You might think giving readers tons of options in your email newsletter will delight them, because they’ll have lots to choose from. However, instead it makes your email look cluttered and decreases click-through-rate. When presented with too many options, viewers are less likely to choose one and are more likely to delete the message.

Email newsletters are a great way for you to communicate with contacts and help build relationships. However, despite popular opinion, you can’t just throw together an email newsletter. Careful consideration of consumer needs, high-quality content, and a strategy should all play into how you send out your newsletter. Instead of wasting time on thrown-together, ineffective weekly email newsletters, perhaps consider changing your strategy to create one incredibly monthly newsletter.  Your readers will likely thank you, and you’ll probably see a better return.