You may assume that email marketing is dead, but consider the number of newsletters delivered to your own inbox on a weekly basis.
When used excessively, email marketing can soon become frustrating for recipients. When used thoughtfully and intentionally, it can be a highly effective tool to keep your audience up to date and engaged with your business and its efforts.
What is newsletter marketing?
Newsletter marketing involves sending informative or product-specific emails to a subscriber list consisting of a combination of current and prospective customers. This marketing platform can be used to announce or promote a new product/service, sales, special offers or simply to keep your business top of mind.
How can it help your business?
Newsletters offer businesses the opportunity to maintain direct contact with their customers and provide their audience with insights into new business developments. It also allows them to cement themselves as thought leaders and authorities in their industry.
Newsletters can also be used to do more than just drive sales. Sharing stories about products, materials, the business or its team can strengthen the relationship between the business and its community.
Before implementing newsletters in your marketing strategy, there are a few things that you need to understand:
Subscribers: Individuals who have signed up to receive newsletters from your business
Open Rate: The percentage of subscribers who opened and read your newsletter
Click-Through Rate: The percentage of subscribers who completed an action within your newsletter such as viewing a product, clicking on a shared link or downloading an attachment
Attributed Revenue: If your newsletter advertised a product or service, this would show how much revenue was generated by people making a purchase from the newsletter
Benefits of Email Marketing
Pros
- 40% more effective than social media
- The buying process is 3 times faster than on social media
- People tend to check their emails at least once a day (Source: Channel Media survey)
- People prefer receiving business-related information via email rather than other forms of communication (Source: Channel Media survey)
Tips for Creating an Effective Newsletter
- Attention Grabbing Headline: The headline should entice the reader to open the email. This usually means including information on what they stand to gain from reading the newsletter.
- Consistent: Like other marketing strategies, remaining consistent is key. Schedule newsletters to go out at regular intervals. These intervals should not be so frequent that they feel like spam.
- Call to Action: Every newsletter must have a strong call to action. Let your readers know what you’d like them to do and how to do it.
- Format: A cluttered newsletter can leave readers distracted, disinterested or overwhelmed. Make sure that each newsletter has a specific focus. Lay out your newsletter in a way that highlights important information and keeps customers engaged – at least until they reach the call to action.
- Mobile Friendly: Most users use their cellphones to read their emails. Make sure that your newsletters are optimised for mobile devices as well as desktops.
- Incentives: Let your customers know what they can gain by opening the newsletter and then deliver on those promises. They are more likely to remain subscribers if there is something in it for them. That ‘something’ could be exclusive access to new products, discounts, voucher codes or subscriber-only resources.
- Unsubscribe: This may seem counter-productive, but having an unsubscribe option in your newsletters is an absolute must. Customers want to know that the choice lies with them. Keep this in mind, and make it easy for them to resubscribe at a later stage if they wish to do so.
If you haven’t subscribed to our newsletter yet, you can do that here.
If you’d like to get started with email marketing, we can help. Contact us to find out how we can create an effective newsletter marketing strategy for your business, set up your campaign and create enticing newsletters for your audience. Schedule a free session with us here and let’s chat!