7 Tips for Boosting Email Newsletter Engagement and ROI

When it comes to digital marketing, email newsletters provide some of the best returns on investment. It provides you with a channel to get your content across to your audience. They are excellent for lead conversion, engaging existing customers, and strengthening brand loyalty. However, the success of your email newsletter campaign depends heavily on subscribers’ open-rates. Statistics show that 44% of marketers say customer email newsletter engagement is their most important challenge.

As a small business, investing in a newsletter campaign with low returns can be frustrating. It’s either the subscribers are not opening their emails or not clicking on your content. Using the right email newsletter strategy, you can send information to your target customer appropriately as well as boost your engagement and ROI.

44% of marketers say increasing email engagement rates were their most important challenge. Click To Tweet

With this in mind, let’s look at seven tips on how to use content marketing in your email newsletter.

1. Determine Your Email Newsletter Goals

Before working on any newsletter, you need to have your content marketing plan and goals (refer to our marketing strategy article for setting goals). It should cover both the individual and overall marketing process. For every newsletter you send out, it should advance your content marketing goals. 

For instance, do you want to generate leads? Do you wish to educate your audience? Do you want to build your brand awareness and authority in your niche market? Or do you want to create more website traffic? 

Be sure to track these metrics so you know if your efforts are working. Using something like Google Analytics will help you keep track of website traffic and events happening on your site.

2. Identify Your Target Audience Pain Points

To determine the right content marketing strategy for your newsletters, you need to identify your target audience’s pain points. These are the challenges and problems they have that can be resolved with your product and service. Therefore, your content will have to address these challenges and offer solutions. It is a large part of what your content will address.

Most newsletters are often so focused on selling a product or service and forget to address customer pain points. For instance, if you run a nail polish business, what are the challenges the customers face? Is it smudging, chipping, polish spillage, or taking them off?

You can address the challenges by listening, empathizing, and using the customers’ vocabulary to proffer solutions. You can do this by creating “home remedy how-to or DIY” newsletters. You can also insert a short video link in your email on nail polish tips. Such actions will help the customers see the value of your product more quickly.

3. Don’t Overwrite Your Copy

Another email newsletter tip is to avoid sending wordy and lengthy emails. It is an outdated concept of sending newsletters. When subscribers click on your newsletter and see a long wordy post, chances are they’ll skip it. People are busy, and so they only scan your newsletter for the salient points. Then they can go on to delete, move on, or take up your offer.

Furthermore, your newsletter should not repeat word for word what your brand does on social media, blogs, or websites. It should carry some new information subscribers won’t get on your other channels. To revamp your newsletter, you need to create unique content.

Your content needs to be clear and stand out from your other content and other marketing newsletters out there. It may involve a lot of time, perfecting the tone, designing, and making it unique, but it is worth it.

4. Use A/B Testing to Enhance Your Email Newsletter Content

A core aspect of digital marketing tactics is to test your email newsletter campaign content. You can A/B test your newsletter emails by sending out two variations. It entails sending two different newsletter content to two groups, A and B.

Any aspect of your newsletter email marketing strategy and content can be tested. For example:

• Your subject line using emojis or not, upper or lower casing, questions or statements, humor, etc
• Send the newsletters at different days or hours
• Email content: include CTA or not, length of the email, short versus lengthy, personalizing email or not, etc

The version of the newsletter with higher engagement helps you identify what to keep or discard. A/B testing these aspects of your newsletter is a continuous process of tweaking and adjustments.

5. Include Third Party and User-Generated Content

The content of your newsletter must not always be about your company. You can incorporate content from your partner brands, industry experts, or influencers. It serves as a great way to align your business with experts and build subscribers’ trust. Third-party collaboration is also useful in increasing your newsletter subscriber list. These can be tweets, quotes, or links to their content.

Additionally, you can include customer-generated content to make your newsletter more engaging. It helps when you switch the focus from your brand to the audience. You can add reviews, customer posts, comments, or videos of them using your product. Adding some human-touch to your email newsletter always proves effective in engaging your subscribers. If your campaign is only about you, subscribers can easily tag it as one of their most annoying email newsletters.

For example, custom writing service website Pick The Writer‘s focal content marketing strategy is sharing customer reviews. It helps when subscribers see reviews from someone else who has used your product or service. They are more likely to take such reviews seriously.

6. Create Content Using Trending Topics or Events

The content you are sending should feel fresh and relevant to the reader. Thus, what better way is there than to include trending topics and events in your newsletters? It helps keep your customers in the know and also effectively includes your brand into the conversation.

The best place to get these trends and events is via your social media platforms, like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. There are also tools like Google Trends that shows the popularity of search topics and keywords. Furthermore, with hashtags, you can find trending global events like the US Open or music festivals. Remember only to use the trends that relate to your sectors.

7. Create a Compelling Call to Action Button

Don’t forget to add calls to action (CTA) buttons at the end of your email newsletter. CTAs tell your subscribers the next step you would want them to take. You might require them to click a button to read a blog post, subscribe to newsletters, sign up, fill out a form, etc. However, try not to use generic CTAs like “Click to download or “Sign-up,” “Start trial,” because they will not do much for your conversion rates. The essence of a CTA button is to make the subscriber want to take the next step. And it is likely to improve your conversion rates.

Try to experiment using different CTAs and positions in your email newsletter. The size, color, and shape of the CTA button are likewise important.

Bonus Tip: Add an Easy-to-Find Unsubscribe Button or Link

It helps if you make an unsubscribe link or button very visible and easy to find. People like knowing they can unsubscribe at any time. Plus, when people no longer want to receive your newsletter and have trouble finding the unsubscribe link, they start marking the emails as spam, which will affect your newsletter’s deliverability.

Next Steps

Do not let yourself get stuck on sending out outdated newsletters that do not yield results. There is such content marketing potential for your email newsletter if you get it right. And with these email newsletters tips, you can start creating content for your newsletters and tweak it as you go.

With effort and patience, you’ll start seeing the benefits of content marketing in your newsletters.