A newsletter is an email sent to your subscribers, packed with engaging content, announcements, and offers.
A great email newsletter plays a crucial role in an effective digital marketing strategy. These emails are sent periodically, usually once or twice a month, and help you stay in constant contact with your target audience.
But creating an engaging email newsletter that stands out can be a real hassle. For some context, modern consumers receive 121 emails each day. That means you must be strategic with how you create and deploy your newsletter.
This article will help you with just that.
How to Create High-Converting Newsletters
Conversion rates vary widely depending on your niche, but engaging newsletters consistently outperform other digital marketing channels.
For instance, the average clickthrough rate for email marketing is 2.91%, compared to the average 2.41% Google Ads CTR for search and 0.46% for display.
Email CTR is also higher than the average CTR for social media ads of 1.2%.
But, how exactly can you create a newsletter with optimal clickthrough and conversion rates? Follow these eight steps.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Knowing who you plan to talk to is the first step to email newsletter success. Understanding your target audience will help you determine other things, like the type of content to create.
Start by painting a picture of your ideal email subscriber. What are their interests? Challenges? Goals?
You must do extensive audience research to get that data. You can start by using survey tools to send surveys to your existing subscribers or customers. Use these surveys to collect feedback on their interests and challenges.
Social media platforms also provide polling tools that you can use to collect data.
Another effective technique is to analyze your existing customer database. Go through your CRM reports to see who your customers are. Complement this data with the insights from your surveys and questionnaires so you can have a comprehensive understanding of your audience.
Ultimately, you want to know your target audience inside out. And it’s not just about their demographic data (age, gender, location). It also helps to have psychographic data like their attitudes, interests, values, and lifestyles.
You can then use all this data to create a persona that visualizes your newsletter subscriber. Here is an example of a B2B persona a SaaS content marketing agency can use when building their newsletter strategy. It shows the role of the ICP (ideal customer profile), their responsibilities, and the resources they trust. These are all vital insights that could be used when creating a newsletter strategy for this ICP.
This makes it much easier to know who you are creating the newsletter for and what they’d want from it.
2. Create an Email List
Before you can send your email newsletters, you need to build an email list composed of your ideal subscribers.
You can do this in several ways.
For instance, why not create online sign-up forms and pop-ups to collect relevant email addresses on your site? Semrush, for instance, incorporates a sign-up form into its blog:
You can offer lead magnets to boost the chances of site visitors sharing their email addresses with you. Give them access to reports, e-books, and whitepapers, among others, on topics they’ll find interesting in exchange for their contact details.
Online events like webinars can also serve as excellent lead magnets. This is a strategy BambooHR follows:
Take advantage of offline events as well. You can create a digital business card and enable two-way contact sharing. Specify the types of data you wish to collect from leads. Apart from email addresses, you can usually collect data such as their name, phone number, company, and designation.
The bottom line is that you stand a better chance of collecting email addresses when giving people something in return. Therefore, go back to the persona you created above. Identify something your ideal customers struggle with. Then, consider creating a valuable resource that helps resolve that pain point and give it to your audience in exchange for their email addresses.
3. Segment Your Email List
Segmentation is organizing your email subscribers into groups based on specific criteria so you can send more targeted content.
For instance, you can create a segment of loyal customers who have hit a certain total spend or have bought from you a specific number of times. Then, send them specific types of content that acknowledge and encourage their loyalty to your brand.
The best email marketing platforms will help you segment your list. Most of these platforms have prebuilt audience segments for different campaign goals. For example, they may have segments based on engagement levels, i.e., highly engaged vs disengaged subscribers.
What segments should you create? Well, the answer will depend on your goal. Think about what you want to achieve with your newsletter and create audience segments to help you achieve that.
For example, to increase engagement, you could segment your list by recent activity and send re-engagement emails to inactive subscribers and exclusive content to your most engaged readers.
4. Design Eye-Catching Layouts
The best newsletter designs grab attention and guide the reader’s eye.
Start with a clean, organized layout that uses your brand’s colors and includes high-quality images. Keep the design responsive, ensuring it looks great on desktop and mobile devices.
Use headings and bullet points to break up text and make scanning easy for readers. Check this out:
Tools like Canva and Adobe Spark offer email newsletter templates that can help you achieve a professional look even if you’re not a design expert. A visually appealing newsletter draws the reader in and improves the overall reading experience. This boosts newsletter engagement and ensures subscribers always look forward to your next newsletter.
You may also want to include a social profile at the bottom of your email. This is a great option that can help increase your reach. It can grow your social media presence by helping you get more Instagram followers, LinkedIn connections, etc., from your subscribers.
Don’t forget to place an unsubscribe button in your email newsletter to ensure compliance with email marketing regulations and respect for subscriber preferences.
5. Craft Engaging Subject Lines
The email subject line is your first impression, so make it count. It should spark curiosity or offer value that prompts the reader to open the email. See the example below:
This subject line sparks curiosity because it leaves the reader wanting to know what they can do to get such a significant saving.
You can also use actionable verbs, like “Discover” or “Learn,” to create a sense of urgency and excitement.
Don’t forget to personalize your subject lines where possible. Use the subscriber’s name or reference their recent activity. Check out this example:
Finally, keep your subject lines concise. Aim for less than 50 characters to ensure it’s not cut off on mobile screens.
You can also experiment with questions, emojis, or compelling teasers that relate directly to the content inside. The goal is to stand out in a crowded inbox by being relevant and enticing without resorting to clickbait.
6. Create Engaging Content
Effective content keeps your subscribers coming back. Focus on delivering high-value content that matches your audience’s interests and needs.
Always aim for clarity and brevity. Your readers are busy, so respect their time with concise, impactful messages. Incorporating storytelling can also make your newsletter more compelling and build a stronger connection with your audience.
Mix up your content types per email newsletter to include behind-the-scenes looks, exclusive offers, industry news, and peeks at your educational blog posts.
Grammarly, for instance, sends a mix of writing tips, product updates, and special offers to subscribers with its newsletters:
A good email newsletter content strategy is just 30% selling and 70% starting conversations, educating, and sharing insights that enrich your subscribers’ lives or businesses. This is the 30/70 rule. Striking this balance ensures that your emails become valued resources that build brand trust and loyalty among your target audience.
7. Include Clear Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
A strong CTA prompts subscribers to act.
Be clear about what you want your readers to do next. You may want the readers to visit your website, sign up for a webinar, or take advantage of a special offer, among others:
Place your CTA prominently so it is easy to find, and use action-oriented language that motivates immediate response. Try different CTA formats, like buttons or links, and use contrasting colors to make them stand out.
A well-placed, compelling CTA can significantly increase your conversion rates by guiding readers on where to go next.
8. Continuously Refine and Make Improvements
Success in newsletter marketing doesn’t come from standing still but from the relentless pursuit of perfection. This is another one of the most important email newsletter tips to follow.
So, use analytics to track open rates, click-through rates, and conversion metrics. This data will highlight what’s working and what’s not in your email marketing campaigns.
Listening to subscriber feedback is also crucial as it provides direct insight into their preferences and needs.
If some campaign elements aren’t working, be bold and experiment through A/B testing.
Depending on your findings, you can try out new layouts, content types, and sending times to see what resonates best with your audience.
Conclusion
Crafting newsletters should be an integral element of your marketing strategy. And now, equipped with the right know-how, you’re set to elevate your approach.
Once again, here’s what you must do to create a newsletter that resonates with your audience. First, understand your audience and segment your email list. Then, deliver visually appealing, tailored content that adds value, and continually optimize your strategy based on feedback and analytics. Good luck!
