Nowadays, there are so many different ways to reach your ideal audience, from social media to paid ads to influencer marketing. In comparison, email marketing may seem old-school but make no mistake as it is still a powerful marketing tactic. It is an effective method to speak directly to your customers and perfect for all – from small businesses to big to consultants to realtors. It is simple, quick and most essentially it works. According to one study, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring customers than Twitter and Facebook combined. While, according to another one, investment in email offers more revenue than any other marketing channel.
When it comes to emails, it doesn’t really matter in what industry you belong to. Perhaps you want to spread word about a new product/service, send promotional offers or even if you just want to connect with customers, emails are perfect for all. However, to reap these benefits of email marketing, you need to stand out in your email newsletters otherwise, it won’t take time for your customer to hit the spam button. Moreover, there are already 70% of businesses currently making use of emails and so it’s important to design an informative and an attractive newsletter.
Give a reason to sign up
If you don’t have a list of subscribers to send your email newsletter, then a well thought-out design plan won’t mean a thing. The best way to make people signup is to give them a reason to opt-in. You need to attract people by giving them something in return such as exclusive offers or discounts which will encourage them to sign up and make them wait eagerly for your newsletter. Moreover, depending upon your business, you can also provide people access to free e-books, online seminars, link to podcasts, etc. Try to be creative in what you are offering to people with your newsletter. Plan to give them something to which they can’t say no. Besides, make the signup process simple by asking for only essential information such as the mail address and first name. Refrain from asking a whole lot of detail as no one have enough time to fill out a whole form especially for an email newsletter.
Selecting the right tool
To distribute your email newsletter, you will need simple and effective software or tool. While there are so many tools for mail distribution, the popular ones are SendInBlue, MailChimp, Squarespace and Campaign Monitor. These software offer pretty easy campaign and list management, template designing and manage all technicalities related to sending loads of email so that you don’t get blacklisted for spamming. Additionally, many software feature analytics tools that allow you to measure how well your campaign is doing. They help you figure out what you are doing wrong and what you need to change to get the desired results.
Understand your audience
There are many ways to make use of an email newsletter, depending upon your organization and its business. It can be used to promote a product, notify people or simply inform about your brand. Your subscribers have agreed to receive updates from you and if you send them something irrelevant, they would probably unsubscribe. Therefore, it is important that before you design your email newsletter, you jot down what you are trying to achieve. Learn about your recipients and always keep them at the forefront when planning your newsletter. Ask yourself, “Who is your target audience and what are their requirements?”, “What are the goals of my newsletter?”, “What will be my subscribers interested in?”, “How frequently should I send them?”. Once you have figured out the answers to these questions, then you can design your newsletter.
Keep design and content minimal
Your email newsletter need not be content-heavy as you don’t want your recipients to hang on to it and read it all day. The purpose of your newsletter is to send your customers somewhere else, for instance, to a website or a blog. So, write concise copies that encourage your readers to click the link given in your newsletter and visit your website. Moreover, the newsletter design should be something elegant, minimal and in accordance with your content.
Follow these simple tips to get a beautifully and meaningfully designed newsletter that anyone would be delighted to find in their inbox. Make your content concise and valuable by keeping the design minimal. Don’t forget to test your email before you shoot it out and then you are good to go!