Newsletter Marketing, may be old-school in the age of social media marketing but it is still one of the most dependable marketing tools available. It is very cost effective and most importantly, reliable. In this post we will discuss 6 newsletter marketing tips. Alternatively, if you want more information on newsletter marketing tips, check out the webinar on ‘Newsletter Marketing Best Practices’ here.
Newsletter is a communication mechanism where you are sharing information which is of interest to the subscriber and by virtue of doing so you are engaging them with your business. Here are the two key features of newsletters:
- Regularly distributed publication
- Content is of interest to the customers
Newsletter marketing is not:-
- Sending emails only about your own business, product promotions
- Sending unsolicited offers and spam emails
Given below are graphs published by the Internet Marketing Division of Medical Management Associates. The Internet Marketing Division have been designing, managing, and marketing custom medical websites since 2000. The graph provided by them shows how newsletter marketing drastically helped the healthcare consulting firm in bringing leads to their website.
What is the purpose of newsletter marketing?
The purpose of newsletter marketing primarily is to engage and nurture subscribers (customers and prospects), and provide content that would address the problems or questions of the target audience.
For example, in an education business, where students are being prepared for a certain test; in this case, you would send content to them that is relevant to the students like dates of certain examinations, course structure, etc.
For marketers, newsletters carry three primary benefits:
Cost effective way to get the mind share of your subscribers.
Cost effective way to find out the interests of your subscribers.
Gain new subscribers/businesses: If what you share in the newsletter gets shared by your subscribers with their own contacts then you land new subscribers or businesses.
Who should consider doing it?
Any business or organization who is serious about engaging the customers, prospects or constituents should consider doing newsletter marketing. There are cases when the business may be small and therefore, you may not have a bandwidth or a team to run newsletters. In such situations, it is understandable. But if you have a marketing budget available, you should really consider newsletter marketing.
6 Newsletter Marketing Tips:
Here are a list of six newsletter marketing tips that will help you enagge leads better and will perhaps bring about a positive change in your website traffic
1. Build Opt-in Subscriber Database
Building opt-in subscriber database is one of the most important newsletter marketing practices. You can build your subscriber database from leads on your website, blog, social media profiles, events, personal meetings, and other lead generation sources. You must also remember to honour the ‘unsubscribe’ requests with any delays.
2. Segment customers
If you provide multiple products or services then it will make sense to segment your subscriber data into logical groups. Segmentation is handy and useful and one should try and do it if multiple types of audience that you are catering to.
If you don’t segment then it is likely that whatever content is shared will not be of relevance to some of your subscribers and it drives unsubscribes.
3. Create relevant content
The content is actually the most important part of the newsletter, and not the design. So make it relevant! Create content keeping in mind the kind of content your target audience would find interesting. Given below is a table comprising content that differs, depending on the type of audience:
4. Work on your design
The best design practices for newsletters would be similar to email campaigns. They include the following:
- Be consistent with fonts, colour themes and layout
- The design should ensure the email is readable (fewer italics)
- Try to cover fewer topics (two to three)
- Use attractive images/visuals; put Alt Text on images
- Include social share links
- CAN Spam compliance
- Personalise the message body
- Follow subject line best practices.
5. Frequency
The frequency of your newsletters depends on two factors-
Ability to put together the content – If you think it takes too much effort to do it every week then don’t send newsletters every week. Send it every fifteen days or once a month.
Interest of your subscribers in receiving your content – If you’re subscribers find it painful to read newsletters every week then avoid it. You will be able to find out this information through your weekly subscriber frequency. If the unsubscribes go up, then you would know that it isn’t working. In some case, your good customers will call you and tell you if your newsletters are too frequent.
6. Ensure Deliverability
Pick a reputed email service provider
Avoid words that tantamount to SPAM in subject and body
Some designs are prone to land in junk/spam – test our design
Always provide unsubscribe/opt-out link
Remove email addresses that are invalid or contain profane words
Maintain a Suppression List Sender Email Address
Reply-to address should be from valid domain
Email Campaign reports, like the one given below will tell you how many newsletters were delivered and how well they performed, based on ‘opens’, ‘clicks’, etc. (If you are using a tool to send newsletters, it would be easier for you to analyse your campaigns)
I’d advise you to follow our newsletter marketing tips, especially if email marketing is a serious lead generation activity for your business. For more newsletter marketing tips, check out our blog post on “Newsletter Marketing Best Practices” Webinar, here.
