Newsletters are a great way to connect with your audience and keep them informed about your business on a regular basis – they are personal, targeted and consistent.
Email newsletters typically contain a lot of content — more than your average promotional email. Email newsletters can be great tools for engagement, this is because newsletters give in-email information rather than simply leading readers to a call-to-action button.
Creating a truly excellent email newsletter means do more than send a few lines of text every week or so. With all that content and all that scrolling, it’s important to know how to make your newsletter attractive! Great design can help make your newsletter more navigable, more beautiful and, yes, more effective. In this post, we’ll show you how to rock a newsletter and let your audience click “open”.
The focus of your newsletter will be important on how attractive it will be. But figuring out what type you should create and what content should go into it is also the most difficult part. It is important to know who your readers are so that you know who you are writing for. Try what your audience is interested in, what industries they work in and what topics they focus on so that you can write content relevant to them.
One way to find out what to focus on in your newsletter is to test different versions of them. An easy way to find out? To ask! Take a survey to ask your current customers what they want to see in your newsletters.
Most newsletters try to do a lot of things at once. Does it make sense that your product updates are in the same newsletter as your top tweets of the week? Once you decide on your focus, stick to it so your readers know what to expect every time.
Newsletters with a ton of content can be made easier to navigate with a table of contents. A static table of contents can be useful to show readers what to expect, but even better is an interactive one where readers can click to skip further to a specific section. The way to design one is by using anchor links.
You cannot tell from the static image of the newsletter, but the table of contents must be clickable. Tap any link in the list, and you’ll jump down to the corresponding module. This technique is additionally useful for long, long, long newsletters, where a company includes a lot of in-email content.
A bold, beautiful introduction is essential to grab readers’ attention from the beginning. Using the HTML background color to create a full-width effect in the Hero module is the correct way to do this.
We are all busy people and we find ourselves spending the least amount of time in our inbox. “Our inbox should have been a place where we go for quick, digestible communication from companies. Instead, we are now constantly flooded with marketing newsletters that offer us very little value.”
Because your audience will spend less time reading email than a blog post or white paper, they need to understand the moment you open your newsletter – keep the content simple and straight forward.
The simplicity of engaging newsletters is the key to their readability. But you can also grab the attention of your readers by making the writing concise and punchy.
Design proficiency is gained in keeping each module consistent in your newsletter. However, the asymmetrical design and variable material modules can evoke a feeling of joy, fun and interest.
Your newsletter should not always be just about your company. Incorporating the content of thought leaders or influencers into your industry is a great way to align your brand with experts. Try to include quotes, tweets or links to content from your partners or favorite brands to create an engaging newsletter.
Case studies and testimonials serve as social evidence for your business. When a customer reads the success story of one of your happy customers, it also encourages them to become customers.
In fact, social evidence data shows that 92% of people would trust the recommendation of a colleague and 70% would trust the recommendation of someone they don’t know.
So, craft newsletters to showcase case studies, testimonials and reviews of your business.
Another way to make your newsletter more engaging is user-generated content. User-generated content is any content, like images or videos, that’s created by users and shared on online platforms like social media. Think about incorporating content from your community, such as comments, highlights of interesting examples of product use, or answer questions that are frequently asked on social media. Businesses typically repost user-generated content on their social media feeds, but you can also create a newsletter about it.
This is a great way to Creating a newsletter to showcase user-generated content will show your subscribers how many Loyal fans your business has and it will help you boost sales too.
Sometimes a little animation is the best way to express a product or offering. This is a particularly helpful strategy with apps or web tools where a static screenshot just doesn’t do it justice.
Neither GIF is particularly complex or has an extensive number of frames. Still, they give readers an idea of what to expect and level-up
Depending on the nature of your newsletter, you may want to link your content to popular topics or events. Marketers often want to learn about the latest trends, so providing your own comment around them can be an effective way to engage your brand in conversation. In addition to sharing your latest blog posts at once, you can also create a blog post roundup.
Want to get a lot of eyes on your latest blog post? Instead of waiting for your audience to go check out your newest post, you can get them excited about it and increase traffic by sharing your site with them in an email. In addition to sharing your latest blog posts at once, you can also create a blog post roundup.
A blog post roundup provides many of the best blog posts of your company for your readers to read. For example, you can create a blog post roundup of your most popular blog posts so far, or create the best roundup of blogs on a particular topic.
Social media is a surprisingly effective channel to get people excited. Have some big news or special content to share in your upcoming, engaging newsletter? Reveal a short excerpt on social media to create some buzz about it.
Take advantage of the various formats available for you to use. For example, you may want to use Twitter and Facebook and Instagram Stories for photos and gifs to include some live action and speaking in your teaser.
Everyone loves a good deal so your customers will definitely enjoy receiving emails from you which include awesome coupons and promotions.
To increase conversions, create exigencies with limited time offers.
Create a reference-as-a-friend newsletter to ask your loyal customers to recommend your business to their family and friends.
You can ask your customers to forward emails to their contacts. Then, if someone signs up for your email list, you can reward the original customer with a special discount.
This is a great way to grow your email list and introduce your business to new, potential customers.
The quizzes are super fun and people like them. You can get a huge amount of engagement by adding a quiz to your newsletter. But for best results, instead of creating a fun quiz, create a quiz for your customers that are relevant to them and your business.
Does your current newsletter resume all the work your company is doing on your blog, social media, or website? Your newsletter should provide your audience with something that they cannot get from your other channels.
With these newsletter ideas to make your newsletter more attractive and engaging, your newsletter content strategy will not bore your customers. Instead, they will always be interested in your messages and eagerly await your next email!