The Complete Guide to Crafting the Perfect Email Newsletters

Email marketing has been around for decades, but it still remains 40 times more effective than acquiring customers through Twitter and Facebook combined. Those who still believe that email marketing is dead are missing out on all of the relationships that they could be forming with customers.

Marketers began believing that email marketing would die with the rise of social media. But, there was simply a shift in the kinds of emails that customers expected. Rather than shifting their email marketing techniques, many people stopped emailing.

The key to an effective email marketing campaign is entertaining email newsletters. If you’re wondering how to do that, keep reading.

How to Write Email Newsletters

An email newsletter gives readers the most important information to know about a company. It can include announcements, products, services, and other relevant content.

Email newsletters are an easy way to connect with customers and update them on topics that they care about. At the same time, they help the company gain traffic for their website. This can lead to conversions and sales.

1. Consider Your Email Newsletter

Email newsletters work for a lot of companies, but they aren’t for every marketing campaign. Don’t waste your time on an email newsletter if it isn’t going to be effective for your marketing goals.

If you’re unsure whether or not an email newsletter would be advantageous for your business, do some research. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are other companies in your industry running successful newsletters?
• What kind of content could you include in your newsletters?
• Do you have the time to keep up with a newsletter?
• What business goals could a newsletter help with?

In most cases, an email newsletter is the best choice for creating leads and meeting sales goals. However, some companies better succeed by focusing on other content like blog articles.

2. Define Your Email Newsletter

If you’re planning on getting started with an email newsletter, you need to define what kind of content you’re going to share. Usually, businesses share any and every piece of news that there is to know about their business. But, this can cause the email to become cluttered.

So, we recommend defining one common thread between all of your emails.

To reduce the randomness of your emails, you may consider vertical topics. Some companies send out multiple newsletters that cover different vertical topics.

For example, a company may segment its customers based on interest. One newsletter may be focused on lead generation while another is focused on making sales.

Some companies divide by subject. A veterinary office may have a newsletter on cats, dogs, birds, and hamsters. Customers can subscribe to the newsletters that they’re interested in.

Segmenting customers and dividing email content also help to improve customer engagement. If they’re more interested in the content they’re receiving, customers are more likely to take action.

3. Balance Educational Content and Promotional Content

Most email newsletters are 90% educational and 10% promotional. Your customers don’t want an email newsletter that is full of advertisements and ploys.

By offering educational content throughout your newsletter, you can draw your customers in. Teach them about a relevant topic and tell them how you can help.

Share blog posts that you’ve made or link to relevant sources.

Don’t waste your time self-promoting. You may see some sales by using this technique, but you’re likely to scare most people away.

You can include a small section for promotions at the end if you have an exciting launch, a new update, or a sale. Otherwise, we wouldn’t waste the time.

When in doubt, leave the promotions out.

Let your educational content do the talking. Plus, all of your blog posts should have calls-to-action in their conclusions.

4. Be Transparent on the Subscribe Page

Don’t make false claims about your emails. Be completely transparent about what your customers can expect to see from your emails.

Compose a summary of the kind of content that customers can expect on the subscription page. Let them know if they can expect industry news, business news, or something else. Tell them the frequency at which they’ll be receiving emails.

You may also want to consider providing a sample email. If viewers aren’t convinced, a sample email will give them a better idea of what they can expect. Then, they’re more likely to know whether or not they want to sign up.

Don’t bother exaggerating the newsletter to visitors. They’re going to unsubscribe if they don’t like it anyways. You’d rather have engaged readers who are going to interact with the content you send.

5. Show Your Creativity

If you want to build an effective email marketing strategy, don’t be afraid to get creative. Arguably, the email subject line is the most important part of an email. The subject line determines whether or not subscribers will choose to read the email.

Take your time to create an engaging, creative subject line that encourages subscribers to click on the email now. 

Some companies try to stick with the same old subject structure, but this gets boring fast. It may help customers recognize your emails, but it won’t do much for encouraging those customers to click on the email.

They’re more likely to click on an exciting subject line that they’ve never read before.

6. Make a Call-to-Action

Pick one primary call-to-action for the entire newsletter. Some companies try to ask too much of the readers. Sticking with one main action is easier for your readers to follow.

Maybe it’s to read a blog post or share the email with friends. Maybe you want them to check out your sale or mark their calendars for a release.

Whatever it is, make it obvious.

You can include other links and suggestions, but these should be for readers who have the time and interest to do so. Your call-to-action should be the main, overarching idea of the entire newsletter.

Be careful that your call-to-action isn’t a multi-step, complicated action either. Put the action in your conclusion and make it simple for customers to identify and do. 

7. Keep Elements Minimal

Because email newsletters contain so much information, they get cluttered easily. To reduce the feeling of crowdedness that so many emails have, you need to keep the design minimal.

Don’t try to include confusing designs and colors. Keep as much white space as possible.

White space helps visually clean up the email. Plus, it makes it easier for readers on mobile phones to click on the right links.

Your email should be clean and concise. The goal is to get your readers to click on a blog post or buy a product. They shouldn’t be stuck reading your email all day.

When in doubt, don’t include the extra element. You shouldn’t need much more than some words and a few pictures.

8. Add Alt Text to Images

No matter how beautiful you may think your images are, it’s likely that most people aren’t going to see them. Due to security concerns, many emailers have images turned off on their computers and mobile devices.

To combat this roadblock, you need to add alt text. Alt text, or alternative text, appears in place of an image when it does not show up in an email.

Alt text is essential when your images contain links. Without alternative text, your readers aren’t going to be able to click on links properly.

9. Allow People to Unsubscribe

Don’t make unsubscribing impossible. It may sound counter-intuitive, but it’s effective.

You don’t want to lock subscribers into an email list that they don’t want to be in. If they mark your email as spam, it may become a problem for your other subscribers.

Plus, those individuals who want to unsubscribe aren’t likely to be interacting with your content anyways. Removing the subscriber will have a positive effect on your email analytics.

Place a clear button for your subscribers to unsubscribe. Don’t hide it among a bunch of other links.

10. Test Before You Send

Test everything. Before you send an email to an email list, send it to yourself. When you’re sending new content, test a few different presentations.

Test every new element, image, and piece of content. What works for other companies may not work for yours.

Take the time to test different methods and strategies with your audience. You might be surprised at what kind of content works better with your subscribers. 

Email Marketing Genius

When it comes to email marketing, there aren’t very many experts. It seems like every audience is different. There is no one template for marketers to follow for their email newsletters.

That’s why you need to keep up with your email analytics. With accurate analytics, you’ll be able to see and track how interactive your current readers are. If there are dips, you can figure out how to address them and make changes as you see fit.

To track your customer engagement, get started with Email Oversight today. Our email activity system can help you gain more information about your marketing campaigns. In turn, you’ll learn more about your customers and what they expect from your company’s emails.