I recently researched email newsletter for a client, and I came across some interesting tips, which I would be sharing here today. Email newsletters are a great way to build trust and relationships and they include promotional content, they’ll also grow revenue. The key is to make your subscribers actually read them.
Keep it short
If you learn nothing else, remember this, keep your newsletter shot. Include three articles at most, all of which should be short, or else you are wasting your time writing stuff that no one will read. You need to forces on publishing information that your readers will find useful and interesting.
Create relevant subject lines
Most people go through their inbox at least once a day to remove irrelevant email. There's just too much email and too little time so it's critical for your emails have a subject line that makes people want to read more. People are looking for an excuse to delete your newsletter - don't give them one! Don't use a subject line like "Our October Newsletter." Instead, use something that grabs attention like an interesting topic or headline from the newsletter, such as "Venture Capitalists Explain How to Get Funded"
If you'd like to encourage people to forward you emails, try this: The Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM) always adds "Pls. Forward" to the end of their newsletter subject lines. Supposedly it has more than doubled their circulation! With Campaigner, you can run two separate campaigns to send one newsletter, changing only the subject line. Campaigner's reporting feature will allow you to compare open rates and optimize your subject lines.
Don’t make your subject lines too long, and don’t use acronyms in an effort to make them shorter, this is a sure-fire way to get your email deleted!
Include images
Readers are always drawn to images—especially of people—which you can see by looking at the heat map. Include high-quality images that relate to what you are writing about, and not for the sake of visual interest alone.
Keep the best information on top
Put your most interesting or useful article at the top of the newsletter so people will be more likely to read it. If you want your readers to take action on something, like sign up for a webinar, put that information at the beginning. Keep more general industry news at the bottom.
Skip the intro
Intros to newsletters are basically little previews of the newsletter, right? Well, if your newsletter is short, your readers don’t need you to tell them what to expect. As the above statistics show, they’re going to skim the headlines anyway. It’s far better to focus on the headlines and content.