One thing at least as important as having a well-designed website for your business is having an email newsletter that offers useful content to your audience. Whether you’re emailing potential prospects, past customers, or a long list of subscribers, newsletters are an excellent tool to create audience engagement.
Whether you want to load your email with sales talk or provide great content, you can still find ways to promote your business and keep subscribers interested. This list of tips will help you create emails that people open, engage with, and enjoy seeing in their inboxes.
Be Aware of the Goal of Each Email Newsletter You Send
Before you even start creating newsletters to send out to an audience, you need to make sure you know the campaign’s goal. This is typically going to align with a broader content strategy when you want the best results.
Some of the things to think about before sending out your next newsletter include:
- What outcome you want from the newsletter – Are you trying to drive traffic? Promote a product? Create sales? Whatever it is, make sure you’re aware of it so you can create the best possible email.
- Of whom your target audience consists – Think about whom you are targeting with your content. This will give you a better idea of what these specific people want to learn more about.
- What extra value can you provide in your newsletter – Is there something extra you can include to add value to your email? This can offer an additional reason for people to stay subscribed.
- When you plan to send out the email newsletter – A monthly newsletter might contain a different set of information that goes out more frequently.
Every email you send out should have a purpose. If it doesn’t, it might make your audience feel as if they’re being spammed. This can create issues with your reputation. So take the time to know your goals, such as what kind of content you plan to send.
Make Sure the “From” Name Is Recognizable
The name that shows up in the “from” section of an email is one of the top items that will get someone to either open an email or send it straight to their trash bin. This is why it’s essential to make sure the name you use is something people recognize.
If you own a company that offers web design, for instance, but the emails say they’re from “Plumbers of America,” you will not get the right people to open them. That might be an extreme example, but it shows how much the smallest things matter when you’re creating emails for conversion.
The next time you create an email newsletter, spend a few seconds to make sure the “From” name defines who you are and what you’re offering. It will make it more likely your email doesn’t end up in the trash.
Create an Email Newsletter With an Exceptional Design
When you want to send out an email that converts, the design is fundamental. Even if the email’s content is thorough and written well, nobody will read it if the design makes it hard to digest. Subscribers will lose interest, and you risk having people unsubscribe from your newsletter altogether.
You may not realize that visuals are an excellent way to complement your written words to get across the message you want. You also want to be sure that the email is designed to be responsive and accessible on all sorts of devices, various browsers, and a selection of email clients.
Email newsletter templates can help when you want your emails to look great, but you don’t want to spend hours on every campaign. This gives you the chance to focus more on content and less on design while ensuring every part of the email newsletter is designed for conversion.
Include a Prominent Call-to-Action With Each Email
When creating an email that converts, you want to make sure people click through your links. The easiest way to ensure this is by adding a call to action on every piece of content you add to your email newsletter.
This can be done through the use of a button or a text link. However, buttons have been shown to create a better click-through rate. There are several reasons for this, including:
- Colors – In most cases, a button will have colors that aren’t seen on the email’s text and background. The contrast will draw in a reader’s eye and make it more noticeable.
- Design – While a link can’t have a gradient, shadow, or other effects, a button can. This makes them stand out from the page, so readers are more likely to notice them and click on them.
- Size – Buttons are typically made to be larger than links, which offers an additional way of capturing a user’s eye so they might click and see what you’re offering.
It’s up to you whether to use links or buttons but make sure the call to action is there so that you get the click-through rate you’re looking for. It shows subscribers what the next step is beyond reading the email, and it makes it easy to go through with it.
Break Up the Content in Your Newsletter Into Chunks
Research has been done that shows most people don’t read an email from left to right like they would a book. Instead, many subscribers are going to skim the content looking for interesting bits to focus on. This makes it pointless to write text-heavy blocks in your email newsletters.
Instead, break down the information into small chunks that can be consumed easily when a subscriber finds a topic interesting. Instead of writing several long paragraphs, break things down into smaller bits. Subscribers can quickly skim the content to find the things that are interesting to them.
This is an excellent way to draw in readers. It also makes it more likely that they will click through to your website or social media profiles.
Keep Your Email Newsletters Consistent Across the Board
When you’re sending out newsletters and emails, you want each of them to reflect your brand’s style consistently. Having a clear font, template, and style guide will help with this. If you change up the template for every email, it can make it confusing for the readers.
In order to build trust and credibility with your audience, consistency is vital. The best way to ensure this is by having a style guide and template you use for all emails. It should include the following:
- A title or header
- A footer
- Content sections
- Areas for images and videos
- Room for call-to-actions throughout
The style guide should also indicate paragraph, heading, and subheading font sizes, styles, color schemes, and link styles. Anyone who contributes to the newsletter’s curation should have a copy of these items and adhere to them when working on the email newsletter.
Make Sure Your Email Newsletters Use Segmentation
It might sound complicated to use segments in your email newsletters, but it doesn’t have to be. The audience can be segmented in many different ways, depending on your needs. For instance, you can group prospects separately from previous customers, customers who were referred from those who were not, or even those who have provided reviews and the people who haven’t.
Even when you aren’t selling a particular product, adjusting the message to cater to different segments helps your emails convert. When you personalize the email to the audience’s behaviors, the copy, content, and messaging will match their specific needs.
As an example, you don’t want to send out a newsletter to everyone on your mailing list asking them to purchase a complementary accessory to a product if half of those people don’t own the initial item. Instead, you can send out product recommendations tailored to each audience to get more people to click through.
Create Headings That Focus on Benefits for All Content
When you want people to click away from an email and onto your website, there needs to be a benefit that leads them to do so. The heading of your email, along with the body copy, should tell the audience exactly what that benefit is.
Every piece of content that you place in your newsletter should have a header and copy that lets a reader know what they get when they click through. The content itself should offer an additional incentive to pass beyond the email and to your website.
Each time you make a new email newsletter for your business, be sure all of the content has a heading that shows a benefit. The body copy comes along to add extra motivation to the subscriber.
Next Steps
Now that you know the top seven tips for creating email newsletters that convert, put this knowledge to work. See which things work best for your organization and tweak things based on the results. Since email is a quick and easy way to create brand recognition and loyalty, make sure you are using it to its fullest.
by Ahoy
