how to create a successful email newsletter
TRANSCRIPT
A SUCCESSFUL EMAIL NEWSLETTER
How to Create
Table of Contents
• Who’s Using Newsletters, and Why?
• Key Attributes of a Successful Newsletter
• Questions to Ask Before You Launch a Newsletter
• How to Find Content for Your Newsletter
• Anatomy of a Newsletter
• A Crash Course in Newsletter Design
• When to Send your Email Newsletter
• How to Get Subscribers for Your Newsletter – and how NOT to
• How to Track Your Newsletter’s Performance
• BONUS: A Pre-Flight Newsletter Checklist
Who’s Using Newsletters, and How Successful Are They?
Key Attributes of a Successful Newsletter
Maintain consistency. Define your publishing schedule and stick to it. Down to the
minute.
Provide something truly valuable. Not just coupons and discounts. “Deliver real insights
that are going to help your customers live better lives, or get better jobs.” – Joe Pulizzi, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute
To sum up: “Just remember CVE: Consistent, Valuable, and Exclusive. That’s really all it
takes to succeed with email.” – Joe Pulizzi, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute
Offer exclusivity. Offer content and benefits that are only available
in your newsletter.
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2
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4
Questions to Ask Before You Launch a Newsletter
1. Are you willing to go light on the sales
pitches?
2. What content are you going to put into this
newsletter?
3. How often are you going to send it?
4. How will you measure success?
5. How will you promote it?
6. Which vendor will you use?
How to Find Content For Your Newsletter
1. Re-publish your best-performing social media content
2. Recent posts from your blog
3. Staff profiles
4. Customer profiles & case studies
5. Curated content
6. Best (thing) of the month
7. Question of the week/month
8. Polls and surveys
9. Company news
10. Content that’s not available anywhere else
The Anatomy of a Newsletter
Sender name:
identifiable
and consistent
Subject line
1 2
Include your
company logo
3
Have
well-written
content
summaries
4
Compressed
images (so
email loads
instantly)
5
Send to
targeted list
segments
6
One or more
CTAs w/ buttons
big enough to
click on in
mobile
7
Copyright notice
8 9
Unsubscribe
link (or link to
preference
center)
10
Physical
mailing
address
The Anatomy of a Newsletter
1
3
2
4
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7
8
10
5
6Have
well-written
content
summaries
A Crash Course in Newsletter Design
Here are a few essential elements of a mobile-friendly design:
• The text is big enough to read easily – 12 points at least.
• Any links or calls to action are large enough or have enough space around them so they can be clicked easily.
• The entire message loads fast – instantly. Mobile users are impatient.
• Usually, there’s a single-column design. Two column designs just don’t work well on mobile devices.
When to Send Your Email Newsletter
The truth is… there is no magic answer.
The best time to send a newsletter depends on your audience. It’s something you just have to test for.
Consider starting your testing with Wednesday or Thursday early afternoons or late mornings.
Aim for a time when most of your audience is at their desks (ahem – at their devices), but when they aren’t getting deluged by other companies’ emails.
How to Get Subscribers for Your Newsletter
Add opt-in
formsTest “pop-ups”,
also called
“overlays” or
“interstitials”
Use landing
pages
A/B split test
your opt-in
forms
1 2 3 4
How NOT to Get Subscribers for Your Newsletter
Don’t add people to your list that haven’t specifically – expressly –signed up for it. For example, just because someone…
• gave you their business card at a conference, doesn’t mean you should add them to your email list.
• connected with you on LinkedIn, doesn’t mean you can send them your newsletter.
• signed up for a webinar - or any other kind of content – doesn’t mean you can send them your newsletter.
How Much is Each Subscriber Worth to You?
It’s a fairly basic calculation.
Here’s a simplified version of it:
How Much is Each Subscriber Worth to You?
Here’s an example of how value per
subscriber might look in a real-world
application:
How to Track Your Newsletter’s Performance
While a basic tracking system, like Google Analytics, can tell you
how often people are taking individual actions, the tool you really
need in order to track results over time is a marketing automation
platform.
With a marketing automation platform, you can track:
Users who
appear on
your site
Who
becomes a
newsletter
subscriber
Content
asset
downloads
Demo
requests
And all the
steps
in-between
Bonus: A Pre-Flight Newsletter Checklist
