Email is one of the useful tools to boost any company’s growth. Although it is a traditional form of communication, it is utilized by businesses around the globe to build their brand as well as engage the customers. There are various email marketing strategies followed by marketers to stay ahead in the competition. Crafting the best email newsletter to promote the business as well as its products is one among them. There are several reasons why email newsletters have become so prevalent in our day-to-day business operations. We listed a few below.
Why Do You Need the Best Email Newsletter?
- Email Newsletter is capable of driving more sales than other marketing strategies.
- As per the research by Nielsen Norman Group, 90% of the users opted for a newsletter to receive company updates, and only 10% chose Facebook.
- Some users eagerly wait for company newsletter to learn new offers.
- Also, through email newsletters, you can boost social media following.
- It is one of the affordable and effective ways to grow your relationship with the customers.
- According to a survey conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, $1 spent on different email marketing strategies is said to return profit up to $51.
What Are the Best Practices for Email Newsletter?
1. Keep Your Contents Balanced
Since content forms the basis of any email newsletter, one must invest some time on balancing it properly. Although the whole point of the newsletter is to promote your product, you cannot use it only for this purpose. Utilize 90% of its space to speak about an article that interests the receiver or the product that users are interested in buying. So, you can spend the remaining 10% solely on promotional messages. According to some studies, the best email newsletters contain 90% of educational content that users are interested in as well as relevant to your target market.
It will create a healthy balance between your contents. Also, if you include promotional text, try to make it sound light. That is, do not force your customers to buy your product or services through your email newsletter. It will be a turn off for your receiver.
2. Have a Short and Simple Layout
Do not include long and lengthy articles in your newsletter. Such contents may annoy the user and most of the time go unread. Hence you must mention only introductions or summary of an article in it with an appropriate link to the full article in your website. Also, try to maintain some whitespace in overall email newsletter design. That is, keep your contents uncluttered with a simple layout.
So, the readers can view the content easily and quickly. You can also include some graphics, videos, or GIFs in your newsletter instead of keeping it simple. It is said to improve the user engagement tremendously.
3. Make your Email Newsletter Mobile Optimized
Use highly responsive email newsletter design that fits well with any devices. Be it a widescreen laptop or a small screen mobile; you must optimize the content so that the users can view it in any device. But according to a study conducted by GetResponse, you can find only 17% of marketers who have optimized their email for mobile devices. If you want to be one among them, follow the tips mentioned below on how to design your email newsletter for mobile devices.
- Use responsive and single-column design.
- Make use of large (12 pixels or larger) and bold typeface for your email messages.
- Use bullet points wherever necessary.
- Keep your pre headers and subject line small.
- Design a large call-to-action button (at least 44 x 44 pixels size) that you can tap easily with a finger.
- Optimize the image size for quick download.
- Also, optimize the landing page of your website for mobile devices.
- Use the latest mobile technologies such as QR codes to generate more leads.
4. Use Alternative Text for Every Image
You must follow this step since most of the users disable images on their mobile or desktops. In such cases, they can only see blank spaces in the place of the image in your email newsletter. They may not know what you included in your newsletter and the chances of ignoring your messages increases. Hence you must make it a custom to add alternative text for every single image you include in the newsletter.
You can also include different colors and fonts instead of plain informative text. Whereas, if you add the Call-To-Action (CTA) button in the newsletter in the form of an image, you must make sure it is clickable even if the image is not visible.
5. Come Up with Personalized Contents and Offers
The readers always like to receive a personalized email newsletter or offers that benefits them the most. To begin with this strategy, one must segment his wide range of customers before proceeding with the other steps. You can segment based on geographical location, user’s behavior pattern, demographics, and more. Choose the one that best suits your business requirements and segment the list. Once done, you can send your customers a customized newsletter addressing them as well as their problems personally.
You can specify their name in the subject line and contents to make it sound personal. Also, you can provide some particular solutions or offers on the problem which they were eagerly waiting to buy. The more you make your newsletter personalized, the more it engages your subscribers and thereby increases the deliverability rate.
6. Design It to Stay Can-Spam Compliant
You must always get your technical details right. You might have compiled a beautiful newsletter with exciting contents on it, but what is the point if it does not stay complaint with Can-Spam act. It is a law passed by Federal Trade Commission that sets the rules and regulations for commercial email messages. To make your email newsletter Can-Spam Compliant, follow the rules mentioned below.
- Include an easy to understand single click option for unsubscribing from your emails. You must include it in every email newsletter.
- You must respect their opt-out request and remove them from your email list within ten days.
- Do not forget to mention your mailing address in every newsletter. So, the readers can communicate with your company with no much hassles.
These rules will make your email newsletter look as well as sound professional and reputable. Also, it increases the deliverability rate to a greater extent.
7. Track and Optimize Your Email Newsletters
To track the result, you must know your short-term as well as long-term goals of your email marketing. Once you know it, you must decide performance metrics based on your goals and pick any analytical tools to track the output.
Check some of the key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the outcome:
- Open rate: It shows how many recipients have opened your email.
- Click-through rate: This metric identifies how many subscribers click the links included in your email newsletter.
- The time span between click-through: It shows the number of subscribers who saved your email to read it later.
- Activity patterns: This metric determines the place or your articles which engaged your subscribers the most.
- Unsubscribe rate: The number of users who have hit the “unsubscribe” button.
- Spam complain rate: It shows the number of recipients who clicked the “spam” button.
- Bounce rate: This number indicates the number of emails that have not reached the audience.
- Delivery rate: It shows the number of emails sent versus the number of emails delivered.
- Time on site: This metric shows the time spent by the recipient on your website after clicking through the links in your email.
By monitoring the metrics, you will get to know which is the best time to send the email newsletters, and what works best for your business needs. Based on the outcome, you can optimize various elements of your email newsletter such as subject line, layout, images, headers, contents, CTAs, and other. It is one of the best as well as recommended ways to increase your company’s ROI with the help of an email newsletter.
To Sum It Up
Since email newsletter is not a new phenomenon, you must dig deeper into its strategies to bring out the best from it. Also, it holds excellent value than other digital marketing tactics you can find online. Hence follow the best practices mentioned in this write-up to reap the maximum benefit from this channel.
