Email newsletters, once considered unfashionable and low-tech have risen in popularity in the last few years. From increasing value and having direct communication with your consumers, to building loyalty and creating the habit of reading your content, email marketing is a new way forward to be your clients’ daily bread. As one of FAULHABER’s goals this year is implementing our newsletter strategy and growing our newsletter subscribers, we ourselves have had to figure out how to approach this very valuable communication channel.

But, how does one do that? Keep reading to find out.

Be a smart subject line writer

The subject line of your email is the “first impression” of your content, so keeping it short and sweet is the way to go. Finding smart ways to talk about the topic of your email is key and playing with interesting, out-of-the-box subject lines will get you far.

One of many ways you can go about doing this is using the famous person + category formula. Compare a famous person to a category that has nothing in common to call people’s attention. For example The Meryl Streep of PR, what does this mean? People will have to click on your email to find out!

Choose the right platform

In our competitive world, there are thousands of platforms that do the same thing. What differentiates one from the other are different features, templates, and analytic capabilities, but depending on the content, size of your audience, and goals, you can benefit from one platform over another. So do your research, weigh the pros and cons and make a decision you know you won’t regret.

Take advantage of user-generated content (UGC)

When you show you are social listening and making use of the content your followers are creating, people will feel heard and it then increases your credibility to people who don’t know you or your brand/business. Gathering UGC is simple and you can even encourage your audience to submit or share any content that is related to your brand to gain exposure. You can also use engagement strategies like CTAs, polls, or surveys to gather data from your own consumers very quickly.

Make it personal

Nowadays, people are ultra-aware of where they share their personal information, and when they do, they hope that it’ll be used to their advantage. Sharing valuable content, insights, and news of what’s happening near them is ideal. We understand these are harder to act on, but you can also start simple by customising your email with their first name, this makes a huge difference. We learned that personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened and personalized emails get 6 times more transaction rates.

Segmentation

As your email list continues to grow, it is important to segment your audience based on their interests, location, how they heard about you and how familiar they are with your brand, so you can properly target your different segments in a way that makes sense to them.

Choose the right visual identity

With the number of newsletters being sent every day, the visual aspect of it is almost as important as the content itself. Depending on the brand and type of business, newsletters could look and feel very different, so it is crucial that you go for a visual identity that fits your brand and the voice of your content.

If your content and brand are playful and colourful, feel free to use memes, animations and play with the colours in your email, but if your brand’s tone is more formal and has a lot of statistics and in-depth information, go for a simpler layout that allows you to have more text space and fewer distractions from your content. There’s no right or wrong way and there’s definitely a lot of grey area from fun and playful, to simple and serious, just be sure to make it your own and keep it consistent.

Email Accessibility

A big part of your email’s success depends on how easy it is to actually read it. Most newsletter readers open emails on their phones, so inevitably your emails need to be mobile-friendly, but that’s not everything. You also need to consider being optimized for different devices, having simple and easy-to-understand text and font, using a minimum size of 12 font, and other accessibility considerations.

We know this can get quite overwhelming, but we are here for you. If you’re looking to improve your newsletter, contact us today and learn how we can work together.