Newsletters have been around for a long time. Sometimes your porch might be full of them. You don’t look at them, you just let them pile up; some people might even put them in the recycling bin. They started out as simply informing the public of updates, but in the digital age they have become so much more. Newsletters can be used to make sure that customers stay and that customers come back. They are able to be incredibly personalized so they not only speak with the voice of your business, but also in a voice your customers understand.
The ability to use digital services such as email to send out newsletters also means that separate mailing lists can be created to differentiate between your customers. No longer do you need to create one newsletter for everyone, with modern technology and software, it is now easy to compile a selection of different material and release it in different newsletters tailored to different audiences.
However, there are over 144 Billion emails sent every day; that’s a lot of emails. In fact, according to some sources in the time it took you to read this sentence, over 20 million emails around the world were written. With so many emails being passed around, you need to make sure you know who is reading them and why. So what can you do to make sure they don’t just end up in the trash?
It’s nice when others remember who you are
Personalise
Why might someone read your newsletter? Because it’s for them. That’s right, as mentioned above, personalising your email for different people can be the difference between peaking a person’s interest and begging for the bin. Even just writing a person’s name at the top can make a difference. We all know that feeling when every time we meet someone, they keep asking for our name. It’s much nicer when you feel that someone knows you. Simply adding a few personal touches is a great idea.
Information is key
Why do you want to send out a newsletter? To inform your customers of changes or improvement, right? Well, putting that information in a way your customers can understand and find interesting, makes sure your email survives users email inspections. Don’t give your readers every single new piece of information about your business, cut it down so it’s in a bitesize and manageable chunk. If you have something important to say, summarise it and the provide a link to the full thing from your newsletter. Reading blogs can help you come up with ideas of what to write, Blogarama is a good resource for thousands of ideas for your content.
When it’s too long, it’s too much.
Short and Snappy
If you open your inbox, click on an email and see that it’s about the same size as an academic essay, you are probably going to want to stay away from it. Maybe you are actually interested in the topic, but the length just takes too much away from the rest of your day. You need space. Keeping your email down to size is the key to ensuring readers are actually going to read.
Layout
Neilsen research has shown that people tend to scan newsletters they receive, so you want to make sure that they can handle it. By using the
Giving readers the choice to leave means they will want to trust you more.
Giving them the freedom to choose
People love freedom, and giving them the freedom to choose whether to subscribe or not has been shown to be one of the reasons people will stick around. Nielsen showed that newsletters which offered a choice were far more effective than those which didn’t. Making sure that your email comes off as important, and not just a piece of junk mail is important.
Making sure that your newsletter balances out the needs of your business and the requirements of the customer is the first step to ensuring that your newsletter is effective. By paying attention to these five key areas, you will be more in touch with your customers than you ever were before.
