From the early days of bulk printed updates to the more modern email model, the newsletter has long since been a lead generating tactic for marketers. Email newsletters are used to drive consumers to the sales funnel and eventually lead to conversions, but they should also be valuable sources of information and entertainment for your audience.Â
When you are creating an email marketing strategy you must consider your newsletter as a major marketing asset. If you are not already using an email newsletter as part of your content marketing strategy, it is time to do so. However, knowing how to create one that will generate leads can be difficult if you are new to content marketing.Â
Below we dive a little deeper into creating an email newsletter that is guaranteed to drive leads.Â
What Newsletter Do You Want To Send?
One of the major problems that content marketers face is figuring out what type of email newsletter they want to send to their audience. This can lead to email newsletters that are unfocused and cluttered, showing too many elements of your business to be truly effective. Your email newsletter should focus on one topic and one vertical.Â
Your email newsletter could focus on one topic per month or one product per month. You could create a blog post, video, and infographics focusing on a new product or service you have just released. Alternatively, you could send out a newsletter that simply promotes your company and shares company news, with calls-to-action driving readers to different pages on your website.Â
Keep Content Relevant
There is nothing worse than receiving an email newsletter, opening it, and seeing that the content inside is not relevant to you or your interest in the company. Many companies make the mistake of using a newsletter simply to tell their audience about their own company news, but most people outside of your company are not interested in this, leading to unsubscribe numbers and abandoned cart numbers increasing.Â
The majority of your email newsletter content should be educational and entertaining, with promotional language taking a backseat. Each update should be relevant to your different audience segments, and should never be a “hard sell†of your business, brand, or products. Look at what your audience is searching for on your website and try to focus your email newsletter content around this information.Â
Set Specific Expectations
Once you have thought about what newsletter and which content you want to send out to your audience, you should move on to setting expectations for the newsletter on your subscribe page. You should set specific expectations about what will be in each newsletter each month, or what the client can expect to see in the content.Â
Your subscribers will be happy to see exactly what they will be receiving each month and this will encourage them to subscribe. If they are able to see that their interests are met in the email newsletter, they are more likely to hit the “Sign Up†button. Tell your audience upfront about what you will be sending them, how often it will be sent to them. Setting expectations for your audience will also make your brand more trustworthy and build brand loyalty.Â
Perfect Your Personalisation
Using the customer’s name in the email newsletter is a great place to start for personalisation, but you can go the extra mile and improve your personalisation efforts even more. If you are marketing to corporate consumers, you could mention the client’s company or congratulate them for an achievement (where you are able to, of course) and for retail stores, mentioning a previous purchase can help too.
Be sure to segment your email audience list so that you can send the right content to the right people. This is another form of personalisation that your audience will appreciate. Start small with your personalisation if you are new to the email newsletter marketing game, so that you can see how this performs for your different campaigns.Â
Super Subject Lines
The most important part of an email newsletter is the subject line. After all, once someone signs up for your newsletter, there is no guarantee that they will open and read it. Your subject lines need to catch the attention of your readers and encourage them to open your emails and read them.Â
For example, you could write something along the lines of, “John, We Know You’re Ignoring Usâ€. This is both funny and eye-catching and will encourage the reader to open it to find out more. If you would like to improve your email newsletter marketing tactics, remember to think about what newsletter you want to send, keep your content relevant and personalised, and set specific expectations for your email.Â
For those who might need some extra help with professional email marketing, feel free to contact NetMechanic today for more information.Â
