If you are in the business of marketing, you need to create email newsletters to drive sales. Contrary to the notion that emails have gone out of fashion, research shows that they are still viable. 72% of customers prefer to be contacted via email.
Email newsletters don’t generate great results by default. Certain factors come to play.
Here are six ways to create email newsletters that covert:
- Know your subscriber
Who am I sending this newsletter to?
Such a seemingly basic question goes a long way in determining the efficiency of your campaign.
An effective email newsletter identifies the receiver. It puts you on the right track, and ensures that your message doesn’t end up with the wrong person. Sending a newsletter to someone who has no need for it is a waste of your valuable time and theirs.
There are diverse consumers on the market. Carve out your own audience. Be very specific in your campaign.
- Set quantifiable objectives
Now you know who you are reaching out to. The next question is: what do you want to achieve with your campaign? There are many reasons why marketers send email newsletters to prospects.
Leaving it open to your subscriber to do whatever they want, is like setting out without a destination. Stir the boat in the direction you want in order to get favorable actions.
Do you want your customer to know about your latest products? Do you want to increase your traffic? Or do you want to invite them to an upcoming event?
Listing your objectives gives your campaign a purpose, and enables you to measure outcomes. Make use of the SMART principle in doing this for tangible results.
- Make your message comprehensive
The content of your newsletter reflects your objectives. What a reader makes of it determines their line of action.
Break your information into chunks for easy reading and assimilation. Don’t write your newsletter like a book. People don’t read newsletters from left to right, but skim it in search of items that are of interest to them.
Keep it short with minimal texts.
The human brain processes visuals a lot more than texts. Make use of visuals to grab their attention. Use bright colors that are in line with your brand to arouse interest.
- Personalize your content via audience segmentation
You already identified your target audience in the beginning, but there are sub-categories among your audience. While they may be similar to each other, they have individual needs.
Break your audience into various segments in creating your content, so as to speak to them in a language they can easily resonate with.
Make use of personalization tools such as dynamic content to show subscribers messages that are relevant to them individually. Dynamic content helps to personalize email newsletters based on insights about customer history and interactions.
Send your message with a name your subscriber is familiar with. For example, if you subscribed to our email newsletter, receiving a message from Effective Inbound Marketing wouldn’t come as a surprise to you because you were anticipating it, but if the message was from a staff of ours you aren’t familiar with, you may be weary of it.
- Sell value to your subscriber
People love to buy, but hate being sold to. At every turn, there’s someone urging the consumer to buy something – this can be tiring.
Differentiate yourself from the bandwagon by selling value in your campaign and not just products or services. People love to buy because of the value the things they buy offer. For example, rather than sell an air conditioner, sell the value of comfort it provides. How does it make the subscriber’s life better?
Highlight the benefits of your product(s) in both the heading and body of your newsletter to spur you subscriber to want to know more.
- Add a call-to-action
Emails with a call-to-action increase clicks by 371%. Marketers often assume that prospects will click their content after reading, but that’s not always the case. Some people may click it, and others may not. Aim to get as many clicks as possible by asking for it.
Button call-to-action performs better than texts due to its attractive features.
Some of these features include:
- Design: Special design effects make it more visible and attention grabbing.
- Size: It comes in bigger sizes compared to text links, hence, readers can hardly miss it.
- Color: Colors are used for beautification. You can use a different color to draw attention.
Conclusion
Besides updating customers about your products and/or services, email newsletters are great for lead nurturing. They help you build a relationship with your subscribers through regular communication. Over time, your subscribers feel like they know you, and are more comfortable to patronize you.
Featured image credit: Pixabay