As a business, it is important to maintain contact with your clients. They need to know who you are and to associate your brand with a face.
Shedding a human touch on business helps you strengthen the bond with your customers.
Keeping in touch with them is therefore essential. There are many ways you can keep in touch with your audience, and among them are social media, blog posts on a website, or newsletters.
If social media marketing or building a site might seem more accessible, sending newsletters that will actually be read might seem more challenging.
Considering that the inboxes of many people are full, you need to find ways to build and send effective newsletters.
Let’s discover 15 useful tips for making your newsletters effective.
Every audience is looking for something special. They are already bombarded with newsletters that present obsolete information.
If you want to make your newsletter effective, you need to come up with something new.
This does not necessarily mean to do something different from the others, but to do something different from what you were doing before.
You need to share things that happen behind the scenes and your experiences. Share new things about your business and your knowledge through experiences.
2. And add value at the same time
Sharing interesting information about your business does not mean that you will engage your audience instantly.
To keep it engaged, you need to share your ideas and knowledge while adding value at the same time.
No one wants to read and see the same thing over again, so try to keep the information fresh and interesting.
We all know those bulk messages and emails everyone is receiving every day.
And the first challenge is having your newsletter opened.
Firstly, you need to know a few things about your audience, to build an appealing title.
But the most important aspect that gets your newsletters opened is the personal touch.
But how can you do this? By using your name or business address that shows a name.
Seeing a familiar name as a sender makes you open that email, says a study.
In fact, it turns out that the “from line” is twice as important as the subject one.
4. Be consistent
Expecting to have success from the first try might lead to disappointment. Especially if you work with people.
That being said, even though you already have an audience, you need to keep it engaged. And you need to build it.
How can you better do this? By being consistent.
Send your newsletters regularly. Like this, your audience will know when to expect a newsletter from you. And if you carefully build it, you can keep your clients engaged.
5. Make it eye-candy
Let’s be honest. Almost every business sends newsletters and they are on the market for some time.
They are older than social media, so everyone is using them. Besides presenting relevant content and adding value, you need to make it eye-candy.
This means that you should add images, gifs, or short videos that your audience can relate to. There is a lot of newsletter software on the internet that offers lots of colorful and interesting templates.
Depending on your business mission, vision, and brand, you can build a representative newsletter template that catches the attention of your audience.
6. Add emojis to your subject
You can make someone open your newsletter by adding your name to your line. And another way to enhance this is by adding emojis to your subject.
Of course, they need to be relevant to the topic. But using them makes the subject and newsletter friendlier, and this can help your audience get closer to you.
7. Make it work on every device
Now with all these technological advancements, people are using more and more their phones. They are smartphones, so you can do everything on them.
At the same time, some people still have office jobs and use laptops and computers, thus opening your newsletter on desktop.
Studies show that almost 50 percent of people delete an email if it is not adapted to mobile format. This is why it is important to make it work on every device. Make it eye-candy and easy to read.
8. Make it simple
You already know the vision, mission, and values or your business and why you are investing in marketing in the first place.
You want to sell an idea or product, promote new services, increase brand awareness, drive traffic to other business pages, and so on.
But keep in mind that there are a lot of other businesses on the market which are trying the same thing as you: catching the attention of your audience.
So, make it as simple and concise as possible. This will increase the chance of your newsletters to be read. And slowly, you can accomplish your goal.
9. Be flexible
If the content you will share through the newsletter is quite diverse, it is advisable to let your audience choose the topics they are interested in.
Like this, you will avoid crowding your subscribers with boring and dull information for their area of interest.
By allowing your audience to choose what to read, you show them you are flexible.
10. Be honest
You know that many websites or businesses promise amazing content or exclusive deals if your sign up to their newsletter.
But many of these do not know how to build newsletters, and you end up being disappointed. Because you signed up for completely anything.
This is why it is important, to be honest, and transparent with your audience.
Let them know what they are signing up for.
You do not need to have a long list of names and subscribers, but a community of an engaged audience.
11. Start with a good hook
Besides the sender and the subject, the first line of your newsletter is the one that can be seen without opening the email.
If this trio is carefully and strongly built, you will have your newsletter opened and read.
So, choose to start with a good hook. Find something relevant to the title and the idea you want to send, and make it sound appealing.
Your first sentence is the one that keeps the audience going on.
It is important to be consistent and flexible, but you need to measure your newsletter impact at the same time.
You already have some goals, so you have aligned your newsletter to them. It should be easy to measure its impact.
For example, if you want to promote new products or services, you should check how many were sold.
13. Find your unengaged subscribers
Another idea that will help you make your newsletter effective is by identifying your unengaged subscribers. They are not opening or reading your emails for a reason.
You need to either analyze their behavior (they do not open the emails at all, do not click to read more on the subject, and so on) or reach out to them.
Maybe they would like to read about something else. And this is also a good opportunity to find out more about their preferences.
14. Show your personality
It is not enough to put your name there to make the newsletter more humane.
You also need to show your personality so that people will start seeing you and your business as something much closer.
Knowing about the people behind a project or a business actually engages the audience.
15. Tell Stories
Not everyone has the same knowledge and experience as you. So, not all have the same perspective on the same thing.
Crowding your newsletter with lots of information will make it hard to read. Instead, you should share your knowledge and experience through stories.
They are the ones appealing to the public, that have the power of arising empathy, emotions, and feelings.
Conclusion
Making a newsletter effective has never been easier with these 15 tips. Keep in mind that you need to make it relevant to your audience, and share interesting insights.
Be flexible, show your personality, make it eye-candy, and valuable. And do not forget the stories are the ones that stories unite people.
Thomas Lanigan has work experience for 4 years as a marketing specialist, social media manager, writer, journalist, and editor at Dissertation-today.com. Also, he is a professional content writer in such topics as blogging, marketing features, progressive education programs, business, and psychology. His hobbies are cycling, gardening, and reading.
