Writing a monthly email newsletter is a great way for you to cheaply and effectively communicate with your customers. Via your monthly newsletter you can reinforce brand awareness while helping to build up a certain level of loyalty.
If you don’t already send a monthly newsletter to your currently customers, we suggest that this is a great avenue to help boost turnover and the success of your brand. If you are new to the world of email marketing you may be asking the question – So what should I be sending out inside my email newsletter? What makes a good email newsletter?
Through experience we have found that there are several general rules which you should follow where possible. Hopefully some of the advice within this article will set you and your business well on its way to establishing a successful newsletter campaign.
Do not make it too sales oriented.
Inside your monthly newsletter, your aim should be to make the update interesting. If every month you are broadcasting the same message ‘buy my products now!’ recipients will quickly get tired.
Simply broadcasting a sales message every month may put people off and could result in a substantially increased unsubscribe rate.
So what should you include? We normally advise companies that in your monthly newsletter you should not make it to sales oriented. Discuss some of the news and developments from within your company – help generate a more human side to your brand rather than simply asking your customer base to buy from you again.
Inside your monthly newsletter why not provide a tips and advice section? This will normally generate a good level of interest and will help increase the level of trust and knowledge associated with your brand name.
Short Punchy Articles
When broadcasting your next email newsletter, recipients do not want to be hit with a wall or text or an essay. Keep your news posts short and to the point.
Your news post should include the article headline with no more than 10 lines of text per article. Your newsletter should be clear and easy to read/follow – sending your clients a massive wall of text each month will often be a waste of time on your part and the recipient will hardly ever read all of a long post. We normally find that only the first few lines are read of each article – then the recipient decides if they are interested.
On the other extreme, make sure that your newsletter includes some meat. If you are sending out a newsletter that is packed with large images and no real content – while the design may look stunning it may fall into a spam filter. In addition, if there is no real interesting content inside your monthly newsletter – why should the recipient stay on your mailing list?
3, its the magic number
We have now covered the overall message inside your email newsletter and how long your articles should be. How many articles should you include inside your newsletter?
Maybe just the one? or if its been a busy month you may decide to add 8 or 9 separate articles. We normally suggest that a email newsletter should include 3 main articles. Recipients will generally only look at the top few articles. Your recipients are not going to sit in-front of their computers all day reading the latest news from your company. Three articles we believe is a good middle ground.
Your articles – Always add a read more link!
We have suggested that your monthly newsletter should not be like an essay, always keep your news posts short and to the point – long articles simply wont get read by most people. However this month may have been a very exciting month inside your company – you may have a lot of news to share which you cant fit inside your newsletter.
Do not worry, there is a great solution which will also produce more information for data mining!
Use this approach, inside your email newsletter, write your three articles – each one with a headline and 3 or 4 lines of summary. This should act as the hook to get your recipients interested. After your clients have read your opening 3/4 lines – include a ‘read more’ link next to this article. The link can forward the user onto a blog post on your website which contains the full article (remember search engines love lots or rich new content on your website, so many regular news posts are a great positive in SEO terms).
The great benefit of using this method is that it allows the Email Blaster UK system to generate more detailed reports on your email newsletter campaign.
Via our automatic link tracking system, we will record who clicks links inside your newsletter. If for example a customer named Bob Smith clicked on the read more link on the second article inside your email newsletter – you would be able to easily identify that Bob is interested in this area. Your EBUK stats centre will provide you with this information – using this information, you could always give Bob a phone call and ask if he would like any more information regarding article two from your email newsletter.
Summary
Email marketing is a great tool. Via sending out email newsletters once a month it can really help to boost brand loyalty and recognition. There are so many ways which an email newsletter can generate vital information for your business – for example with the discussed ‘read more’ link. You should never blindly send our your email newsletter each month – take the time to develop a strategy and plan. Email marketing can do so much more than simply act as a way to generate sales, via the stats centre it is also a great market research tool. The general advice within this document should hopefully get you on the right track with your next email newsletter.
If you are an Email Blaster customer and would like further advice with your email newsletter campaign – give us a call. General advice is part of the service, we are always happy to help and provide assistance.
Good luck with your next email newsletter broadcast.
