Forget finding a needle in a haystack. Your audience faces a much bigger challenge: Finding your business's newsletter in an increasingly bloated inbox.
Email newsletters are powerful. They let you communicate directly and personally with each person on your subscriber list, driving engagement and building the relationships that drive brand loyalty.
Consumer survey data shows that 54% of Americans subscribe to four or more newsletters, while 16% subscribe to at least 11. That's a lot of emails, especially when you add the countless other marketing emails landing in the same inboxes.
The million-dollar question is: How do you get people to open your newsletter instead of someone else's? These tips can help you attract attention, get opens, and earn more clicks.
Know Your Audience
Personalization is the name of the game in digital marketing today. A 2021 study by the research firm McKinsey showed that 76% of customers are likely to buy from brands that personalize, and 78% will refer friends and family to those brands.
Personalizing your emails is easier than you might think. The key is gathering basic information about your audience's demographics, needs, and buying patterns to divide your list into specialized interest groups. Marketing pros call this process segmentation.
You can segment your audience in various ways, including:
- Geographic region
- Age group
- Family status
- Job position
- Past purchase types
- Shopping frequency
For best results, combine these factors to create buyer personas for each segment. A buyer persona is a fictional character representing the typical buyer of an interest group, complete with pain points and needs. Your team can use these buyer personas to speak directly to shoppers and get more buy-in.
Craft Compelling Subject Lines
While sending personalized emails is great, readers need to actually open your messages to feel the heat. That can be challenging since 40% of email readers have at least 50 unread emails in their inboxes at any given time, according to the consumer survey mentioned earlier.
Eye-catching subject lines spark curiosity among readers and encourage opens. Clickable subject lines should be action-packed and promise value for the reader.
Here are a few examples:
- Get the latest
- The biggest news
- Flash sale
- Exclusive VIP deals
- Did you hear?
- We've upgraded your experience
- Must-know tips for X
Don't be afraid of seasonal references, like “Hot Summertime Tips” or “Rock your holiday dinner.” You get bonus newsletter points whenever you solve an urgent customer problem.
You can include an emoji or two if they're on-brand and relevant. Oftentimes, less is more.
Add Visual Appeal and Keep It Readable
Once a reader clicks on a message, the next step is encouraging them to keep reading. Start by catching the reader's eye with a visually pleasing layout that looks great on all devices. More than 60% of customers read emails on smartphones or tablets, according to Forbes Advisor, so mobile-friendliness is key.
Design makes a difference and should reflect your brand. Consider using a template you can customize with brand colors and eye-catching images. You want to spark recognition and excitement when people open your email.
Make your content easy to read with clear section descriptions, descriptive headers, and plenty of white space to make it easy on the eyes.
Focus on Value, Not Sales
People stop scrolling and open an email when they expect to get something from it. And while special deals and promotions are exciting, the goal of a newsletter is to nurture the relationship between consumer and brand.
It's okay to have some promotional content, but most of your newsletter should be entertaining, informative, or both. For example, HubSpot's newsletter content strategy is 90% educational content and only 10% promotional — tons of value, little selling.
As for what counts as valuable content, think about the problems your audience needs you to solve. Offer unique insights into common issues and actionable advice readers can implement. If there's a seasonal topic or something with a lot of buzz around it in your industry, offer your take.
Most importantly, keep the focus on the reader. Assume their question in every section is: "What's in it for me?" Answer that question clearly.
Keep It Concise and Action-Oriented
Another safe assumption is that people will scan your newsletter before they read it. The easier it is to glance through, the higher the chances that something will spark a reader's interest.
Build your newsletter as a series of impactful bite-size sections, including clear calls to action where relevant. A call to action is a prompt that tells the reader what to do next, like "Shop the sale" or "Watch the full video."
An effective CTA is concise and compelling. It implies something behind the link that readers won't want to miss. Aim to have key performance indicators (KPIs) in all promotional content and select educational content, assuming you have somewhere valuable to send the reader.
Keep your links internal to your site wherever possible. Useful pages to link to include your brand's blog, YouTube channel, and social media profiles. You can also link to trustworthy news sources like the New York Times or your local paper.
Experiment, Track, and Optimize
These best practices will start your email newsletter in the right direction. The next step is to record the results and see what approaches resonate best with your audience.
First, decide what KPIs you want to track. These are measurable values that show your progress toward a goal. Useful newsletter KPIs to track include:
- Open rate: The number of your recipients who viewed your newsletter
- Click-through rate: The percentage of email readers who clicked on a link
- Conversion rate: The ratio of readers who took a desired action, such as buying a product or making an appointment
Consider testing two versions of certain email elements, such as layout and section type, to see what your audience responds to. Do more of what works, and see how your KPIs respond.
Get More Opens and Spread Brand Awareness Like Wildfire
To create a stand-out email newsletter, you need to offer can't-miss value. That will sometimes be a promotion or sale, but more often, it will be valuable educational or entertaining content.
Each newsletter should have at least one "next step" — somewhere the reader can go to fan the flames of their interest. Of course, all promotional content should have a CTA.
Building your perfect newsletter will take time, but Pyromaniac Digital is here to help. We give entrepreneurs and small businesses the firepower to grow in a competitive market, from email newsletters to website design. Chat with one of our inbound marketing experts and unleash your growth potential today.
