Effective advertising almost always includes a robust email marketing strategy, regardless of the type of business. Emails are inexpensive to produce yet reach a broad audience efficiently. Email is an excellent way to communicate your latest company developments, announce limited-time offers or share blog content.
Email newsletters are a popular marketing tool that provides a “one-stop-shop” approach to increasing engagement and conversion. We’ll explain the benefits of email newsletters and how to craft an effective newsletter to take your marketing efforts to the next level.
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An email newsletter is a regularly sent, interactive communication intended to nurture contacts. It is a way to engage your email subscribers and share new, exciting and helpful information.
Overly “salesy” newsletters may alienate your audience, however. Instead, email newsletters should inform consumers about products and services in a fun, approachable way. The goal is to provide value for recipients by offering relevant information and deals.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes: What would you want to know about your company or industry? For example, if your business sells electronics, exciting news about new innovations may pique readers’ interest, making them more likely to read on — and, in turn, welcome future communications from you.
Email newsletters are typically sent as email blasts, also called broadcast emails, bulk emails or mass emails. They’re stand-alone messages sent to a significant portion of your email list.
An email newsletter strategy has many benefits, including the following:
Email newsletter metrics can help you measure return on investment (ROI) for your digital marketing efforts and improve email marketing campaigns in the future.
Crafting an engaging and informative email newsletter doesn’t have to be complicated. Follow these steps to create and send a newsletter that resonates with your audience.
Consider using A/B testing — sending slightly different versions of the same email — to gauge your audience’s behavior and preferences and improve your marketing ROI. Many email marketing platforms offer A/B testing.
With so many companies sending email newsletters, it can be challenging to stand out. Here are some email marketing best practices to apply to your newsletters to help you maximize your results:
Nearly three-quarters of marketers use newsletters to deliver pertinent content among business-to-business marketers, and most create their own content, according to the Content Marketing Institute.
Although it is possible to create your email newsletter using HTML each time, it is far easier and more efficient to use an email marketing platform. These software platforms eliminate coding, help you organize your contacts, and give you easy access to all of your email KPIs.
The following options are among the best email marketing software around:
Mailchimp is an excellent choice if you have a relatively small email list and have never done an email newsletter. The vendor has a free service that supports 500 contacts and 1,000 sends per month (with a daily limit of 500 sends). It includes basic email newsletter templates to customize via dragging and dropping images and text. Higher-level paid plans provide additional capabilities and features.
Email personalization can boost your open rates. Most email marketing platforms allow you to insert personalized content anywhere in the email.
Constant Contact has robust features and an easy-to-use interface. Although it isn’t free, it has affordable plans and various email newsletter templates. You can also access an extensive image library, list-building tools and automation functions to ensure your email newsletters go out consistently. The platform’s AI feature can help you write newsletter content with just a few keywords, thereby reducing the time needed to create each newsletter. Read our Constant Contact review to learn more.
Benchmark has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop email editor, an HTML code editor and free images for your newsletter. You can edit images within text blocks with custom width adjustment and text wrap. Benchmark’s Smart Content AI helps you write new content from scratch or repurpose blog posts or other content for inclusion in your newsletter. Read our Benchmark review for more information.
Like Mailchimp, iContact has a free version to use when you’re getting started. It has many professionally designed templates and free stock images for your newsletters, as well as real-time campaign reporting so you can see your results immediately. With the upgraded plan, you can access tools such as optimized send times, audience segmentation and engagement follow-ups.
Many email services provide easily customizable templates. Here are a few examples from Mailchimp:
Source: Rocket Science Group
Mailchimp makes it extremely easy to customize templates. This Bold template (which offers several options for the background color) automatically includes space for your company logo, a headline, an image, text and a button link for a CTA.
Source: Rocket Science Group
Each Mailchimp template also has a place to link to your social media accounts, as well as a footer for pertinent company information and legal disclaimers.
You can add content by hovering your mouse where you want to insert it. A blue plus sign will pop up. Click the sign, and a menu of content options — such as video, text and photo — will appear. Select the asset you want to add, and it will populate into the field.
Source: Rocket Science Group
Depending on the type of content you want to add, a sidebar may appear. It will ask you more questions about the asset, such as the URL you want a button to link to or a description of the video you want to upload.
Source: Rocket Science Group
To change the background color, hover your mouse over the background, click it and choose the color you prefer.
Source: Rocket Science Group
The Natural template features muted earth tones, like forest green and sandy tan, that don’t distract from your message. Using this template, you drag and drop content blocks to get your preferred configuration.
Source: Rocket Science Group
Mailchimp’s Gallery option is a more image-heavy template that’s perfect for e-commerce companies or media outlets. This template features a white canvas and backdrop to make your pictures pop, but shades of gray, blue and green are available.
Here’s how changing the backdrop color can instantly change the look and feel of your newsletter:
Source: Rocket Science Group
Make sure you add images to your newsletter to increase interaction and boost conversion. Below is the screen that pops up when you select “Add your photo.” You can choose the photo’s alignment; if the images are on your company website, you can add the URL.
Jennifer Dublino contributed to this article.
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