Creating an email newsletter customers want to read
How many newsletters do you get delivered to your inbox every day? Probably more than you could possibly read. People today are inundated with advertising and marketing materials — if you want them to stop and spend time reading your messaging, you need to get creative. Here are a few ways to make sure that your newsletters aren't just filed under spam.
The tone: Your audience and your goals
When crafting an email you need to get personal. That means understanding your audience. Email newsletters need to be written with an individual in mind. This is where crafting a buyer persona is ideal. Personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates than non-personalized emails according to Experian. Study your campaign demographics to identify those that you should be speaking to — and create your email newsletter with those people in mind, as though you are talking directly to them.
In addition to your audience, you need to have an exact goal in mind. What do you want your audience to do? Everything should be crafted with that one goal in mind. Newsletters have to be concise and well developed; you don't want to meander to your point because you don't know when the reader will stop reading.
The value: Balancing promotion and content
The modern consumer is exceptionally resistant to advertising — in addition to being savvy about identifying it. While the average 1970s person in an urban setting was exposed to 500 to 2,000 messages a day, now it’s more like 3,000 to 5,000 messages per day, according to a study by research company Yankelovich Partners. While consumers are aware of your advertising, they still need to be willing to commit their time for it to make an impact. Trying to hide your advertising as something else will often only insult their intelligence. Instead, you want them to welcome the marketing as valuable messaging.
Your goal when crafting an email newsletter is to balance your promotional content and your value. You need to offer compelling and interesting information while still being able to hit upon your major promotional points. Try to avoid loading your email newsletter with heavy promotional content. You risk losing your customers' trust by selling them the idea of a newsletter but delivering them promotions instead. Fulfill your readership’s expectations by determining the promotional content that you absolutely need in your newsletter and building from there.
The words: Your subject line and call-to-action
What's most important in an interview? The first impression and the last impression, of course. Your subject line may very well be the only information someone sees. If your subject line isn't compelling enough, most recipients will simply delete the newsletter. An email’s subject line acts as a gateway to increase customer engagement and leverages your campaign’s success rate. Not only can a subject line make or break your campaign in terms of open rates, it can have a direct impact on deliverability. Create a subject line that encompasses your value statement and uses specific terminology to boost customer engagement. Draw your readers in by telling them exactly what they will gain by reading your email.
As for your last impression — your call to action (CTA) will determine whether your marketing has been truly effective. Your CTA has to be both simple and direct. A well-developed CTA is able to bring the customer to the end goal with a single action to avoid any deviation or loss of interest. A good CTA usually directs the reader to fill out a form, call a number, visit a website, or even make a purchase immediately.
With the above techniques, you should be able to get more response and more engagement — but don't forget to take into account your statistics. Track the performance of individual links to find what works right for your marketing and content campaign.
Interested in learning more about drafting a powerful email newsletter? Contact Jacobs & Clevenger to set up an email marketing assessment with our team.