Newsletters establish a relationship between you and the recipient; it’s your job to provide the kind of content and information they’ll find interesting and valuable, in the hopes they’ll find your business interesting and valuable enough to become or stay a customer. Email newsletters have an extremely high rate of turnover. Managing to keep a long term subscriber is actually pretty rare. So what can you do to write an effective newsletter in order to keep as many subscribers as you can and attract new ones along the way?
- Write a good subject line, but make sure your subject line and the content of the newsletter match-up. A good subject line is what gets the subscriber to open up the email in the first place. Avoid writing click-bait type subject lines, people appreciate authenticity.
- Write good and useful content. Don’t make selling the main focus, nobody likes a pushy newsletter. Sure, offering a promotion somewhere in there a great way to boost sales, but don’t make it the main focus of your newsletter.
- Keep it brief. Email newsletter recipients have the attention span of a well-trained gnat. Keep it interesting, informative, and don’t let things drag on.
- Be Consistent – Have a set schedule for sending your newsletter out and stick to it. One a week, twice a month, once a month, or once a quarter can all work, depending on your business. But pick a date range and stick with it. Check your analytics to get a good idea of the times and dates that have been most successful and use that to adjust your schedule to match. You don’t want to overwhelm your customers with emails, but you do want to remain a reliable presence in their inbox, the trick is to find that balance.
- Make it easy to opt out. People don’t appreciate having to jump through hoops, and sometimes unsubscribing to a newsletter can be a real hassle. Avoid making your recipients do that, they may remember your kind gesture and even sign up again at some future point. At any rate, at least you’ll leaving them with a positive last impression.
If you’ve decided to give an email newsletter a go, be sure to incorporate a few (or all) of these tips into your efforts for a solid head start in email marketing. Newsletters can be a super effective way of reaching your clients directly. It’s your job to make sure reading a newsletter is worth a customer’s time. Sending a newsletter is the easy part, making it good enough to read is the challenge.
For more insights on marketing strategy that actually works for small business, subscribe to the FreshLime Newsletter here. Connect with Jay Bean, Founder of FreshLime and Small Business Marketing Expert on LinkedIn and Twitter.