Amidst the clam­or of Google’s ever-chang­ing algo­rithms, which have wreaked hav­oc on social media mar­ket­ing this past year, email newslet­ters are look­ing to make a come­back in a big way. But, you don’t want to get caught using the same old gener­ic newslet­ter tem­plates as newslet­ter writ­ers did in pre­vi­ous years. Email newslet­ters have evolved through the years, and even more so dur­ing the past few years. Here, we are going to take a quick look at the best prac­tices used by indus­try lead­ers when it comes to cre­at­ing newslet­ters. So, with­out fur­ther ado, let’s get started.

What is the Goal of Your Newsletter?

You need to have a goal in mind for your newslet­ter – basi­cal­ly, you need to know what your newslet­ter is going to accom­plish. So, how do you want your newslet­ter to work for you?

  • Dri­ve traffic
  • Pro­mote a new prod­uct or service
  • Increase sales
  • Engage your audi­ence on social media
  • Get your read­ers to down­load an eBook

It can either be one or a com­bi­na­tion of the rea­sons giv­en above, but you will need to jam your newslet­ter with all the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion regard­ing your goals. One of the ben­e­fits of using a pro­fes­sion­al newslet­ter writ­ing ser­vice is they know exact­ly what it takes to make a prospec­tive click when it comes to writ­ing newsletters.

Have a Clear Subject Line

It’s going to take more than just some word­play on your main key­word to get the recip­i­ent to open your email. This is where A/B test­ing comes in and is going to help you cre­ate more effec­tive sub­ject lines for your email newslet­ter. You will want to address a spe­cif­ic area of con­cern with the promise of pro­vid­ing the read­er with valu­able infor­ma­tion that they’ll find use­ful. While cre­at­ing a sense of urgency and throw­ing in a few pow­er words is great, they won’t work for every industry.

Have a Clear Subject Line

The Preview Text

Just in case your sub­ject line sucked, the pre­view text is going to be your do-over. Most people’s inbox­es are already inun­dat­ed with emails that they don’t want to open, but many will open an email that looks like it’s from a real per­son. The pre­view text should be fun, cre­ative, and infor­ma­tion­al. How­ev­er, more impor­tant­ly, it should give your read­ers a rea­son to keep reading.

Remem­ber, get­ting prospects to open your email is only half the chal­lenge, but it’s a chal­lenge nonethe­less. Address­ing your read­ers by their first name comes across as per­son­al or authen­tic, which will pique their atten­tion. On the flip side, you don’t want to go with the tra­di­tion­al “Hi, my name is…” rou­tine.

Make a Connection in the Body

Peo­ple don’t have free time to ded­i­cate to read­ing large blocks of text in a newslet­ter. Hell, you prob­a­bly don’t have time to read a mas­sive arti­cle, which is why this will end short­ly. Promise.

So, what can you do to make a con­nec­tion with your prospects that just don’t have the time to read through the entire newsletter?

Well, what you can do is use sto­ries or hire newslet­ter writ­ers who can do the sto­ry­telling for you. Why tell sto­ries? Because sto­ries are inter­est­ing. Use a cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry to get your prospects to read through your newslet­ter to find what you’re all about. You can either start with a per­son­al sto­ry or a sto­ry of your com­pa­ny. But, make sure the sto­ry is grip­ping – you don’t want to bore your read­ers to tears.

Since most peo­ple won’t read the entire newslet­ter, you need to make your con­tent skim­ma­ble. How? Get to the point fast and make all the impor­tant infor­ma­tion avail­able and easy to find with­out your read­ers hav­ing to search for it.

As a rule of thumb, stop using large blocks of text as that can be frus­trat­ing to read. Also, don’t over­load your newslet­ter with too many images. This can be dis­tract­ing for the reader.

Nail the Closing

Every newslet­ter writ­ing ser­vice worth its salt knows the impor­tance of nail­ing the clos­ing to your email. Like the sub­ject line, the clos­ing line is going to be equal­ly impor­tant. Your goal when say­ing good­bye to your read­er should be to wind down and make a slow tran­si­tion to the CTA, as in, what you would like them to do next. But, what­ev­er that CTA might be, it should be crys­tal clear and focus what you want from the read­er instead of keep­ing them guessing.

Ending Note

The bot­tom line is cus­tomers love get­ting infor­ma­tion on the brands they love. Peri­od. Cus­tomers appre­ci­ate it when com­pa­nies reg­u­lar­ly pro­vide them with use­ful infor­ma­tion on sales deals, dis­counts, new ser­vices, and prod­uct updates. How­ev­er, the real chal­lenge here is craft­ing an email newslet­ter that’s not only impres­sive to look at but also keeps the cus­tomers hap­py and informed. Luck­i­ly for you, if the afore­men­tioned tips seem too over­whelm­ing, you can always use a pro­fes­sion­al newslet­ter writ­ing ser­vice to help you craft stel­lar email newslet­ters.

SOURCE: Rel­e­vance