Learn What It Takes to Create a Successful Email Newsletter
It’s a challenge all email marketers face. How can I get people to care? What email newsletter tips can I use to excite my customers?
Email marketing is competitive. Simply sharing your latest blog post or promoting a sales campaign won’t inherently help you stand out.
The truth is, emails inundate us more than ever. Advancements in instant-messaging technology, social platforms and push notifications only make the problem worse.
From the most-recent data, the ROI of email marketing has decreased in recent years, landing at 36:1 ($36 in revenue for every $1 of costs) from 42:1 in the previous year.
That’s still an impressive ROI—showing how dominant email is as a marketing channel that drives sales.
So what gives? Why is it more difficult to create a successful email newsletter? Well, customers have higher expectations coupled with limited attention spans because of bloated inboxes.
Yet email remains one of the best mediums for how to grow your business using content marketing.
To get it to work, you have to construct a strong narrative in your email newsletters, messaging that compels readers and a user experience that optimizes for conversions & more sales.
It’s not easy, but you can improve results by making a few tweaks to your newsletter strategy.
In this guide, you’ll discover the key benefits of email marketing and learn five email newsletter tips to make your own campaigns more successful.
What Are the Benefits of Email Newsletter Marketing?
It’s easy to guess the typically cited benefits of email. You can reach your audience directly, email is cost-efficient & increases sales, email newsletters drive engagement, etc.
But email marketing with newsletters is special because it’s particular for one specific segment of your audience: existing customers.
Research shows that email marketing works best when focused on “post-purchase” opportunities. In other words, steer efforts towards upsell revenue, not net-new revenue.
Makes sense. Other types of marketing emails like transactional emails used in sales sequences target leads and potential new customers.
But existing customers are more likely to subscribe to your newsletter. That’s because, according to the above study, they want “to learn about the products they purchase.”
Simply put, once they become new customers or are at least near the bottom of the sales funnel, a newsletter offers them the chance to feel nurtured by you as a customer.
So what are some of the unique email newsletter benefits you can leverage from these insights?
Unique Benefits of an Email Newsletter for Existing Customers
When optimizing your newsletters, ensure you’re providing value for actual subscribers.
Email newsletters shouldn’t assume recipients are still just learning about your brand, so aim for these unique benefits from newsletters to extract as much return as possible.
- You can collect feedback from customers. Email newsletters are perfect for asking about satisfaction levels, sentiments and ideas.
- Educate customers. Subscribers want to learn about your services, understand how they can get the most out of them and stay abreast of new features or updates.
- Increase upsell revenue. Email newsletters promoting product suggestions or discounts & deals almost always yield great profits.
- Drive loyalty via reputation marketing. Telling stories and connecting with customers emotionally means they’ll more likely refer you and become a fan of your business..
What Makes a Successful Email Newsletter?
Now that you know what benefits to aim towards from your email newsletter, how can you realize them?
Remember, we mentioned above that simply sending out information about your company or promotional campaigns isn’t sufficient.
Email ROI has slightly decreased because not enough marketers have upped their content game.
Compel readers with the “hook, line and sinker” approach to marketing. Grab their attention, deliver on the promise with memorable associations and then inspire engagement.
For example, say you’re sharing news about a product update.
I don’t know about you, but I see emails like this in my inbox every day, glossing over most of them if I open them at all since they look like the engineers who coded the updates wrote them.
But if I see an email about a product update from a brand I love because they have a reputation for sharing news in an interesting way? Now I’m intrigued.
Is there a relatable pain point addressed? Is there messaging that makes me feel like the email is for me? Is there a solution to the problem connected to benefits that I can understand?
Creating a successful email newsletter requires great content, good timing and other content marketing know-how.
Let’s review actionable email marketing newsletter tips to help you get there so you can increase conversion rates, improve revenue and grow your brand.
Email Marketing Newsletter Tips
- Write a Compelling Headline as Your Subject
- Make the Content Relevant to Your Audience
- Write Amazing Copy That Converts
- Map the Message to the Buyer-Journey Stage
- A/B-Test All the Things!
1. Write a Compelling Headline as Your Subject
One of the easiest ways to improve your emails is to write great headlines in the subject field.
Make each headline should short, interesting and relevant to your audience; otherwise, recipients won’t open the message and read your content.
Shorter headlines of five to seven words often perform well, but it’s important to test variations with your audience to find what works for them.
Avoid words that are likely to trigger an email provider’s spam filter or turn off customers in general.
For example, “buy,” “order,” “clearance,” “cash,” “cheap,” “money” and “price” aren’t very intriguing.
To generate interest in your email newsletters, try the following:
- Use the subject line to make an announcement.
- Ask a question in the subject line and provide the answer in the body of the email.
- Offer a valuable tip in the subject line.
- Use imperatives to direct the reader. This works best if you want people to download something or sign up for an event.
2. Make Content Relevant to Your Audience
Are you an email marketer who wants your newsletter to make you the hero at your company? Write content that’s actually relevant to your audience and speaks to them specifically.
This means you need to research your target audience thoroughly, understand their pain points.
First, segment by audience information. Email marketers who craft unique messaging for different segments report an average increase in revenue of 760%!
Examples of email segmentation include:
- Geographic (where people live);
- Psychographic (lifestyle characteristics);
- Behavioral (how your audience found you, how they engage with your product, etc.); and
- Demographic (age, gender, etc.).
When you segment subscribers, you can tailor email newsletters to your audience, making them more likely to convert.
3. Write Amazing Copy That Converts
But I’m an email marketer for a chain of hardware stores who needs to push plumbing supplies this week! How am I supposed to make that sexy?
Here’s why you shouldn’t let doubt sink your newsletter down the drain….
There’s no followup to the above sentence. But I did write a compelling line referencing industry-related humor, didn’t I?
Want to know how to seize people’s attention? Humor and puns are a great tactic for subject lines. But there are many others.
Callback time! Remember when I introduced the previous subsection with a question asking you if you want to be the hero at your company?
Yes, that was a copywriting technique to appeal to your personal desires. And it works wonders.
,It’s also important to write like you’re talking to a friend. Conversational writing connects with audiences and persuades them towards taking action.
Just be sure to not literally write like you speak!
Next, don’t obscure your message with jargon.
Whether you sell a $10 item aimed or one worth $5,000, communicating value propositions clearly and with action words is one of the most impactful email copywriting tips to follow.
Lastly, demonstrate to your target audience that you actually know them. People like to feel identified. Let’s look at an example.
This email from a newsletter caters to its audience, service providers, by acknowledging to them that they’re experts. Service providers definitely love to hear that; it makes them feel respected.
But the best part of this copywriting trick? Explicitly saying who your audience is (“as a business owner…”).
When you see your name, title, identity marker, etc., you subconsciously pay attention. It’s that simple.
4. Map the Message to the Buyer’s Journey Stage
What is the buyer’s journey? It’s the path a customer follows to purchase from your company.
When you set up a sales funnel, the buyer’s journey is how that funnel looks from the customer’s perspective.
You should have content for every stage to reflect the buyer’s needs and push them forward in their journey.
For instance, a lead or new customer at the top of the funnel—the start of their journey—has pain points but is still discovering your brand; pushy calls-to-action aren’t ideal for them.
Conversely, you should craft more sales-oriented messaging for those at the bottom of the funnel. They’re ready to buy—or ready to buy even more!.
5. A/B-Test All the Things!
A/B-testing is a way to compare two pieces of copy and determine which one performs better.
You can test an alternate subject line or different body copy for valuable future insights to help you improve open rates, click-through rates or conversion rates.
In fact, you don’t have to restrict yourself to copy! There are lots of examples of A/B-testing for emails, like calls-to-action, images or even testimonials.
The key to A/B-testing effectively is to change just one variable each time you run a test.
If you want to test headlines, for example, the headline is the only thing you should change. The content, images and formatting would all stay the same. This ensures statistical significance.
Once you decide to conduct an A/B-test, determine how you’ll measure performance. You may want to see which headline leads to the highest open rate or which CTA gives you the best click-through rate.
Most email-service providers offer built-in A/B-testing functionality, but here’s a list of different A/B-testing tools for email to consider.
Master Your Email Newsletter With Amazing Content
Turning your email marketing newsletter into a conversion-generating machine relies on great content, strong messaging and a hyper-focused awareness of your target audience.
Email newsletters remain a tried-and-true way of engaging with existing customers to build your brand, drive sales and inspire loyalty if you follow these tested email marketing newsletter tips.
Consistently producing great email content doesn’t happen overnight. Connect with customers, save time and optimize resources by exploring an email writing service that suits your needs.
When you outsource email content to professional writers, you can focus on what you do best while your newsletter runs like clockwork.
It looks like any reports of email’s death have been greatly exaggerated indeed!
