One of the most popular and common misconceptions in the mind of almost all marketers is that most customers don’t like to receive promotional emails. If you ask a few people, this thing may look correct but if you do research on a large group of people, the results will be quite different. Research shows that most people don’t have any issue in receiving promotional emails from their visited brands. The results also concluded that more than 60% of customers only sign up to a brand’s mailing address so that they can receive promotional emails in the future. This is because they want to get notified every time their brand comes up with some new products and services.
This is common thinking that if you like products of a brand, you will never want to miss their new collection. Sign Up for your business updates and to get notifications about all your new arrivals clearly indicates that the customers are not only interested in your products and services but will buy from you in the future as well. They are only performing this step because they are loyal to your brand and want to remain connected with it. Newsletters are one of the most effective and efficient methods that allow companies and brands to take their voice to as many people as possible and tell them about your upgraded or new products and services.
How An Email Newsletter Grow your Brand/Business?
By creating an email newsletter perfectly and implementing the technique in the best way possible, a newsletter can help your business grow in a lot better way. An email newsletter has the ability to not only boost your revenue but increase the customer’s trust in your brand as well. A survey was conducted by the well-known magazine BtoB, the results from the survey clearly show that 59% of all B2B businesses claim that email newsletter is the most effective and efficient among all the channels that are used to market products. They also say that their statistics and reports have proved that this is the best factor in a business to increase revenue while boosting sales.
You may have heard that there is not a right or wrong method of creating a newsletter, this thing is authentic to a great extent but not completely. Experts and marketers have suggested some pro guidelines and suggestions that will help you to create a newsletter in a much better way. It is essential to create an email newsletter in such a way that it can add real value to the reading customers. An inaccurate or not properly created newsletter can not only affect your marketing but may also annoy your customers resulting in losing a precious and loyal client of yours.
You can cover any type of discussion and subject in your email newsletter but you should always keep this fact in mind that the main aim of creating an email newsletter is to inform your customers about your new updates and new collections that have arrived in terms of your products and services. Your newsletter should describe news and events happening in your industry or brand. You can also add some suggestions, advice, or recommendations that can be helpful for your customers.
Sending email newsletters too frequently can become a negative factor for the reputation of your brand. Experts always suggest developing a proper schedule and sending your newsletter according to that schedule. You can only send an email out of your schedule if the information is essential to reach the customers as soon as possible such as telling them about your new collection or limited-time offers. The most common schedule to send an email newsletter is on a weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly basis.
Effective Way to Create an Email Newsletter
A newsletter is the most effective way to market your products and services directly to your existing and potential customers. Some of the most common and major aims of sending an email newsletter are to drive sales, attract new customers, engage different people from different regions with your company or brand. Below is a detailed explanation that will lead you to create an email newsletter that will be not only effective but will get the job done in the easiest way.
- Initiate By Picking a Strategy to Use
- Capture Email Addresses of New Customers
- Cather, Edit, or Create your Own Content For an Email
- Get a Design Template
- Customize and Personalize your Email Newsletter
- There should be an Easy Way to Unsubscribe
- Go Through Email Marketing Laws
- Test your Email
Initiate By Picking a Strategy to Use:
Start by defining a strategy that you will be using to create your email newsletter. One of the first things you should do is to analyze whether you need a newsletter or not. You should answer the question of why you need a newsletter. It is extremely important to answer this question because, with the change in goals and objectives, the strategies also keep changing.
As we all know that different businesses and companies send email newsletters for different purposes, this will require business owners to implement different strategies because of different mindsets. Once you have found answers to these questions, you have to decide on a type of newsletter email that you will implement for your business. Some of the best and most effective kinds include the following:
- Subscription-Based Email Newsletters: If you have a regular parade of things or updates happening every month, a subscription-based email newsletter is the best option for any type of business. The regular parade of things and updates includes some most common activities such as events, interesting content, regular promotions, or continuous new arrivals.
For example, if you have a cats supply job, you can use subscription base email newsletters to request your existing customers to sign up for their coming training workshop, a link to a video that includes some tips and suggestions to stop your cats from eating mud, or to tell customers that you are going to sell collars with minor faults at a lot less price.
- Digest Email Newsletters: If you have a strong and consistent content marketing strategy and you post a bundle of articles and blogs on various platforms, a digest email newsletter is the most comprehensive option. Content marketing is considered one of the most effective options to drive traffic to your brand and it should reach your existing customers so that they have information and knowledge about what you are doing and what products and services you are offering. A short digest email newsletter is a place where you can collect and distribute all of your most popular articles and blogs that you feel necessary to reach your existing customers.
While collecting the content for your digest email, you can start the process by looking at the statistics shown by Google Analytics. You can also select content to be distributed by analyzing your social media engagement and different matrices. It is an efficient way to make sure that your customers remain in touch with your content and visit your brand or website on a regular basis.
- One-Off Email Newsletters: If you are going to implement something massive on your brand or business such as you are going to make a big sale for upcoming holidays, arranging a special once-in-a-year type event, introducing a new and unique product or service, etc. These types of startups and initiatives require an email newsletter that will only focus on a single point and a one-off email newsletter is a best and most efficient method that is widely being used by all minor to major firms.
Brands like Puma and McDonald’s send such type of one-off email newsletter. Be selective about when to send a one-off email to your customers. Do keep this fact in mind that if you start sending such emails very often, it may result in many unsubscriptions from the recipients. Only send such emails for mega-events that happen after a long span of time or something that is of too much importance.
- Action Email Newsletters: This is a type of email in which you include a special action that customers can make just with a few clicks. This action is also known as call and center or CTA (Call To Action). The main purpose of sending action emails is to get people to click and take action. The most common action that business asks in their email newsletter includes Buy Now, RSVP, Sign Up, Visit Now, etc. Such types of emails are usually short because they are only sent to customers so that they can take action without missing the opportunity.
- Nurturing Newsletters: This type of newsletter is only sent to your existing customers or the people who are not your buyers but have shown interest in your business or products that you offer. The main aim of sending nurturing emails is to bring back people who were once your customers but not have purchased products from you for a long time.
Capture Email Addresses of New Customers:
As mentioned above that an email newsletter is used to achieve two major goals, the first one is to keep on engaging with the existing customers and the second one is to not only drive traffic to your brand but make them your new customers. Capturing emails of common people is an important task that is performed in almost all industries to attract them towards their business. There are many ways that can help you to add as many email addresses as possible to your newsletter list.
- The most common and obvious way to collect emails of new customers is to get them written on the register. This method is used by most companies around the world. You can do this by manually asking your new customer’s email addresses at the checkout or you can get help from various software. There are many softwares that are designed to automatically collect your new customer’s emails because they will be directly connected to your brand’s square point of sale (POS).
- The other way of collecting customer’s email addresses is to get help from outbound marketing. This is a marketing technique in which you partner with any other company with the same business or related niche, you then swap your content on different platforms ranging from simple blogs to social media channels and newsletters. Do keep this fact in mind that if you invest some money in such types of marketing techniques through various methods such as paid sponsorship and boosted social media posts, you will see much better results coming up your way.
Gather, Edit, or Create your Own Content For an Email:
After you have selected the type of email that you will use along with the goals and objectives that you want to achieve, it is high time to start creating your email newsletter. Initiate the process by gathering the necessary assets and factors. Research various newsletters on Google and look for different templates. You should choose the one that not only takes your voice to your customers but also look attractive so that it can urge people to read it.
Start by writing a prototype so that you can have a road map or template to follow while writing an actual email newsletter. It is highly recommended to never forget your main goal and objective while making a copy of your newsletter. Do keep this fact in mind that different emails will have different writing approaches.
For example, if you have chosen action email as your newsletter, it is necessary to reach your action point as soon as possible so that people can take immediate action. If you will write a lot of things before the action point, it is possible that people may not reach the action button and quit reading.
While writing a digest or blog email, you should give eye-catching heading to each section of your content and there should be a brief description of articles and videos included in the newsletter.
You are only required to include enough information that people can know what action is to take but the information should not be hidden to an extent that they get confused on whether to make the action or not.
Pictures can also play an important role in a newsletter because alone written text can make the reader a bit bored which can lead the reader to stop reading. If you are composing a digest email newsletter, it is highly recommended to include attractive and related images for almost every section of your content. While creating an action email, you can add an action button in the end but experts suggest that your action button should pop up after a specific time so that customers cannot miss it.
Get a Design Template:
Having a software with an up-to-date and state-of-the-art design template is essential for creating email newsletters. This is extremely important for small businesses because it can give a boost to their marketing strategy more than anything else. If you want to create an email without a design template, it will not only waste a lot of your time but will require a lot of effort to make your email look attractive and eye-catching. You should have an idea that creating things from scratch is a lot more difficult than creating while having a complete template and you only have to put your content in it.
No matter which template or format you are using in your email newsletter, it is always necessary to use “alt text” while adding images. This is the text that will be displayed on the screen if your included images are not being displayed due to some reason. Some of the most common reasons behind poor image loading include poor network connection and weak WiFi signals. It can also happen if your customer has settings of blocking images in an email. Including this text will allow people to know about the image without seeing it.
Customize and Personalize your Email Newsletter:
Many researches, surveys, and studies have shown that personalized messages boost the effectiveness and efficacy of an email or any other marketing campaign on almost all channels. It may not be a much-appreciated option for large businesses because they usually send formal emails but could be a great option for small businesses who not only want their existing customers to remain engaged but want to attract new customers as well. You can make a personalized email newsletter by following tips:
- Divide your Customers List into Different Segments: In order to make an email newsletter that can talk clearly with your customers, you should create different segments of your customers according to their characteristics, demographics, interests, or their shopping behavior. Adopting this approach can boost your ROI (Return On Invest) in a quick manner.
If we take this step as an example, you can segment your customer list into two different categories such as loyal and lapsed customers. This will help you to personalize your email in two different types, one for your regular customers while the other for non-regular customers who visit your brand after a long time. With the first segment, you will only tell them about your new updates, products, and services but with the second one, you will urge them to visit your brand by telling them something special or what motivates them for shopping.
- Smart/Unique Content: Automated email newsletter is a great way to motivate your customers and expand your newsletter marketing program. These newsletters also offer a high engagement rate as compared to normal emails. Such types of emails are usually sent on customer’s special occasions such as their birthdays. The company sends a newsletter to wish their customers while telling them about their new offer or discount package.
- Greet Customers with their Name: Greeting your customers with their names can increase the effectiveness of an email newsletter more than anything. A study was conducted in 2014 by a group of marketing experts, the results show that if you send an email without a personalized message, the click-through of that newsletter will remain near about 5%.
But if you send an email that starts by greeting the customers with their first name, it will increase this percentage up to 7%. This is a huge difference that doesn’t require much effort or time. There are many marketing tools available that have features to fetch customer’s first names while sending emails to them.
Apart from personalizing the receiver, you can apply this technique to the sender as well. The email newsletter will be a lot more effective if it comes from a specific person instead of a company. A company can use the name of its marketing manager, sales manager, or even CEOs.
There should be an Easy Way to Unsubscribe:
You may find it weird but it is better to make it easy for people to unsubscribe from your newsletter address. No matter how good content you send, there will always be some people who want to unsubscribe you at some point. If a customer doesn’t want to receive a newsletter from you, there should be an easy option so that he can unsubscribe. If you don’t make it easy for them, it will not only increase the complaints to your customer support but may ruin your brand’s reputation as well.
Go Through Email Marketing Laws:
There are some rules and regulations that are essential to be followed while implementing newsletter marketing. You should go through FTC’s CAN-SPAM ACT before sending an email newsletter. This will guide you about all the dos and don’ts of email newsletter marketing.
Test your Email:
Before sending an email newsletter to your customers, it is highly recommended to perform some tests by sending your email on different types of devices such as mobiles, laptops, tablets, etc. you will be able to see how your newsletter looks when it is opened and if there is any flaw, fix it. A single flaw in the newsletter can affect your brand reputation and professionalism in the customer’s eye.
