How many newsletters do you receive to your mail box a week? How many do you read? Newsletters are low cost-effective tool to engage with your customers and target audience. So, how do you give your newsletter the best chance of being read? Here are some tips to help you create engaging newsletters which people actually want to read.
Give people an incentive to sign up
Before you start to write and send out your newsletters you need a database of contacts who have subscribed to your newsletter. Why would someone sign up to yet another newsletter? One option to get people to sign up for your newsletter is to offer an incentive. It could be a discount off their first order, a free gift or entry into a raffle. Whatever you choose giving someone a reason to subscribe means they are more likely to sign up.
Decide on your goal
What do you want to achieve from your newsletter? Are you looking to promote a new product or service? Increase sales or enquiries, drive traffic to a page on your website, expand your social media presence or sign up to an event. It should be somethings specific to your business. Whatever it is make sure you only choose one goal and focus per newsletter. That way you will not confuse your audience with several objectives.
Develop an enticing subject line
You should subject line should be relevant to the content of your email. If you can’t get people to open it then you content is irrelevant. So, you need to make sure whatever your subject line it is relevant to audience and is something that will make them want to read on. Here some ideas to encourage people to open your email
- Personalise it
- Make your subject line time sensitive
- Include exciting news that people want to read straight away
- Solving a problem relevant to your audience
How do you create engaging copy?
Once you have hooked them with your headline you need to keep them reading and engaged with your newsletter. To do this there are key things to remember.
- Make it valuable. Make it is useful to the reader like showing them how to do something or share useful knowledge
- Ensure it is relevant. The topic relates to your audience’s industry and something they would be interested and care about
- It must be interesting. Ideally entertaining, or educational or it makes the reader feel good.
Ensure the body content is going to connect with your reader. One way to test this is to ask yourself would you read to the end. If the answer is no go back to the drawing board and improve that content.
Be consistent
If you subscribe to a newsletter you expect to receive regular newsletters and your audience are the same. If you promote a monthly newsletter, make sure you keep to that commitment and send your newsletter out every month not once a quarter. If you do not keep to your commitment this will damage your reputation and also your audience are more likely to disengage. On the other hand, if people are expecting a monthly newsletter do not start sending a newsletter every week. This can be seen as spamming and you run the risk of being reported.
Close your email
The final paragraph of your email is the point where our reader decides whether they want to take the action you have guided them to. Whether it is an offer or to visit your website. Therefore, you need to get this right and have one simple call to action (CTA) so your audience knows what to do next. Tell them exactly what you want them to do. Your CTA is your objective so make sure it stands out and is clear giving your newsletter the best chance of achieving your objective.
Evaluate your results
To understand whether your email is achieving your objective you need to measure the results. Most email software includes analytics tools so you can find out if your emails are converting. Things to check in the analytics are open rates, bounce rates, click through rates, forwards and unsubscribes. You will also be to analysis which content your audience engages with more and if your newsletter is not converting. This is information can feed into future newsletters making increasing their chances of success.
Summary
Well written engaging emails are still an excellent way to market your business and if you write them well people will convert. If you are looking to start regular email campaigns or would like to improve your current email activity. Please get in touch call me on 07753941231, email me or complete my online form and I will be happy to chat things through.
