20 tips for a perfect newsletter strategy

What is the purpose of your e-mail? Do you want to sell a product? Do you want people to sign up on your website for training or education? Do you want your readers to download an app? By determining your goals first, you can tailor your content accordingly and are guaranteed to get more conversions from your campaigns.

There are many online tools that save you a lot of time and money by providing easy-to-use templates for emails. The following tools are ideal for quickly cobbling together good newsletters and personalized campaigns: MailChimp, Hubspot, ActiveCampaign and others.

Spamming your readers every so often with daily newsletters will quickly cause many unsubscribes. You may have relevant and fun content, but too much is too much! So make sure you have an ideal frequency of your emails. You can experiment and test at what frequency you get the most opens and the least unsubscribes. Also be sure to mention in advance to new recipients how often they can expect an email. This way you are transparent, set the right expectations and prevent unsubscribes.

Your target audience will only read your newsletter if the subject matter effectively captivates or helps them. A customer who has just bought a TV at a web store will not read a newsletter about a promotion on kitchen mixers from this web store. Relevance is crucial to convince your recipients of your offer. 

If you want your readers to take action, you must also give them a reason. Therefore, always offer something interesting or useful in your emails. Offering discount codes to subscribers is a popular example of this. However, there are countless other ways to pique your readers' interest in your newsletter. Just think about new products, videos, events, contests, etc.

The headline of your email is the first thing recipients see. Therefore, it is one of the most important factors that determines the opening rate. A headline has one purpose: to catch the attention of your recipients. The preheader is the text after the headline and has two purposes: it tells more about the content of the newsletter and arouses the interest of the reader. By combining an eye-catching headline with an interesting preheader, you convince recipients to open the email and read more about your offer.

Numerous studies have proven that personalization produces better results. An example of this is including your recipient's name in the subject line of your newsletter. This is also logically explained because seeing your own name will have the same effect as hearing your name. Addressing someone personally demands his/her attention. Furthermore, you can also personalize the content of your content in your newsletter using separate campaigns per target audience segment.

A header appears at the top of all newsletters. Thus, it is an important element. Make sure your header includes your company's logo, an interesting proposition and an eye-catching CTA. To keep readers from having to keep scrolling down a newsletter, your header is also best not to take up too much space.

Use images to clarify your message and break up your text into easily digestible chunks. Don't overdo it, though: you're creating a newsletter, not a news album. Too many pictures also cause your recipient to have to scroll a lot to read your mail.

At the top of the newsletter, a catchy title creates a positive feeling for your newsletter reader. Dividing the newsletter into themes or subtitles provides more structure and makes your mail more scannable for quick readers.

Too much text, too many products or too many banners make your newsletter very busy. People also have an increasingly shorter attention span. Therefore, keep it as short as possible. This does not mean that your mail should only be a certain length. Good content has no maximum length but keep your sentences short and don't use unnecessarily complicated vocabulary. Less is more.

Most newsletters are read via a mobile device. Content on a desktop will display differently on mobile or a tablet. Make sure you always review and optimize mobile, desktop and tablet versions in advance according to the device. That way you avoid illegible text, distorted CTAs, incomplete sentences and more.

It is important to stay consistent in the designs of your newsletter. Too many changes to a layout increase the likelihood that your recipients will be startled and doubt the intentions of your newsletter. Trust and brand awareness play a big role in achieving more conversions through newsletters.

Connecting with your recipients is easier with relevant topics. During the holidays, for example, most people are looking for great bargains and gifts. Therefore, newsletters with bargains or cool gift ideas will score well during the holidays.

Personality generates interest and trust. You can give a newsletter personality by using a consistent and specific tone of voice (e.g. cheerful, informal, comical, ...) or using a mascot in your newsletter. A consistent tone of voice is part of your brand identity. Ultimately, readers will recognize your brand by the tone of voice in the newsletter.

With a newsletter without sufficient CTAs or call-to-actions, you will achieve very little. The primary purpose of your newsletter is to convince your readers to do something. Therefore, use well thought-out CTAs like you would use on your website. Make your CTAs stand out with an eye-catching color. In addition, be careful to use soft CTA texts such as “Discover more products or View our discounts.” Harsh CTA texts such as “Buy Now or Order Here” immediately demand a lot from your recipients and can cause potential customers to drop out too early. You can also personalize CTAs. You do this by tailoring the action in your call-to-action to your recipient's goal. For example, in the top-funnel, you are more likely to use CTAs such as “view our offer” or “discover more” while your bottom-funnel is more likely to use CTAs such as “book your room quickly” or “order your smartphone now. 

Next to the header, the footer is one of the most important parts of a newsletter. In the footer, you can mention the most important social channels with a link. This way, readers can easily follow your company on social media. In addition, it is also better to mention your company's contact information. Furthermore, it is also necessary and mandatory to include links where recipients can unsubscribe themselves or make changes to their subscription.

It is imperative to test your newsletters before sending them out. Feel free to send a template to yourself and some colleagues and ask for feedback. This will allow you to check how mobile-friendly or user-friendly your newsletter is. In addition, you should also always perform A/B testing. By continuously testing variations on your newsletter (headline, preheader, images, ...) you will gradually get the right input to improve the results of your email campaigns.

We'll close with one of the most important aspects of an effective newsletter: great copywriting. In email marketing, talented copywriters are worth their weight in gold. Good copywriters tell a story that strikes the right chord with readers. They use the right words in the right order to convince readers of their message. Effective copy, then, means the difference between a sale and a write-off. Be sure to give us a call if you're interested in learning how to write conversion-boosting copy!