If you still don’t know what a newsletter is and how to create your own one, you’ve arrived to the right post. Here we’ll share the keys of an efficient email newsletter template so you can easily start building and sending you emailing campaigns asap!
Nowadays, the email is still an essential mean of communication, but it certainly hasn’t been properly used by brands and companies. Who hasn’t been annoyed by countless and boring emails coming all from the same enterprise and finally decided to unsubscribe?
However, despite this poor reputation, a well done newsletter is a great way to contact clients or subscribers. Therefore, it has to be well thought and done in a professional way, and this is why nowadays’ email marketing platforms come in so handy: their email newsletter templates make our lives so easy!
All you need to create a successful newsletter
It’s not rare that a company’s communication department already has an email marketing strategy, as this is the market’s most effective and profitable channel. It’s extremely important for any business to discover the features that involve designing an email newsletter template, and this is why we’ll explain what is it and how to create it depending on the goals you want to achieve. Here’s what we’ll discuss:
- Meaning
- Usefulness
- Advantages
- Structure
- Creation
Now let’s get right into learning how to create the perfect newsletter!
1# What is a newsletter?
A newsletter is a digital publication (or informative bulletin) distributed in a determined periodicity (weekly, monthly or quarterly) through email to a list of contacts called subscribers, which have accepted receiving the publication.
Newsletters include information about the company and its business, which can vary from the arrival of a new product to an exclusive tutorial for subscribers. This practice is called email marketing.
2# What is a newsletter for?
Its main utilities are engaging clients and increasing sales through emailing.
Loyalty
By engaging clients and fostering their loyalty we create a fruitful and continuous relationship with them, and this way these customers won’t forget our brand. We produce brand awareness.
Our content is what will make our subscribers open the campaigns, so it’s important to stick to quality content; even if we’re not directly selling stuff, we are creating potential customers and, thus, future sales.
Conversions
Generating conversions is the other objective to keep in mind when we send newsletters, that is why we usually include in our bulletins special offers or promotions for our subscribers.
Another goal is to generate web traffic, and make clients notice and get to know our company’s blog or website.
Combining loyalty and conversions
A campaign proves to be effective when it takes these two objectives into account; experts recommend that it includes 30% of commercial information (offers, promotions, discounts…) to generate conversions and 70% of quality content (tutorials, news, events…) so we can foster customer’s loyalty; those would be the perfect proportions in a newsletter template.
3# Which are newsletter’s advantages compared to other channels?
Here we have the four main advantages;
Personalization
Emailing allows us to do something you cannot achieve with any other mean of communication: it brings me directly into the customer’s personal inbox.
We have to take advantage of this and personalize our emails, so we promote a trust-based relationship and the client feels he’s being treated like no other; he has to feel like he’s part of our community.
Higher opening rate
The user receiving our emails is already interested in our services or products, since he has voluntarily subscribed to our newsletter. He, thus, responds actively to our campaigns. We cannot waste this opportunity, so we must create quality content which provides some added value.
Inexpensive
Email marketing definitely generates high profits, especially considering that the initial inversion is quite low. It’s level of profitability is high compared to other channels; its ROI is 4300%, that is, for every invested euro we receive 43 euros.
Quick and easy
We can easily create a campaign from our home in like 15 minutes, and it will arrive to our subscribers’ inbox in a single click.
4# How tocreate a newsletter?
The best way to create a newsletter is using an app built for this particular purpose, specialised in mass mailing. This apps include a graphic editor which intuitively guides us through the whole process so we can start our first campaign. Moreover, they have hundreds of pre-designed email newsletter templates so we can edit them to our taste, or we can choose to create one from scratch.
These platforms automatically organize and update our database, and this prevents and avoids long term problems and keeps it optimized.
Tip: never waste money buying databases; we have to create our own one while we gain subscribers.
These types of apps will erase the invalid emails, will manage any cancelled memberships and will inform us about bounces. It will also segment our contact list.
Not all of our campaigns will adjust to every of our customer’s requirements, so we should separate and segment our subscribers in different lists, according to certain details, such as:
- Age
- Geographic area
- Interests
- Hobbies
This way, we will only have to select the appropriate campaign and send it to the contacts in a particular list. this is also why having different email newsletter template options is so useful.
Finally, these apps show us statistics to prove the impact of our campaigns. These are very significant because they allow us to see where are we failing and what do we need to improve when building a new newsletter. For example, if we observe in the statistics that our opening rate is good but that clients don’t click enough on our links, we should probably change the distribution or design of our call to action buttons, so they become more noticeable.
5# Which are the essential elements in a newsletter?
We have to really define our goals before starting and make that every element of our newsletter is destined to reach those goals. The main elements that every newsletter should pay attention to:
Presentation
We should always include the name of our company in the beginning of the email so our subscriber can instantly identify that the email is coming from us. Design, colors, the font and the style in general… every detail is important to help us create our identity, but we must anyways always say who we are.
Title
The title must always reflect our campaign’s objective; it should be clear, concise and attractive, and stand out so it calls the subscriber’s attention.
Images
Most of them should be related to our newsletter’s purpose. They should appeal to our subscriber’s emotions and arouse in them a desire to know more. They should be big enough, in high definition and obviously show what we are willing to announce.
Call To Action
They are the ones supposed to generate traffic and lead customers to our website. The button must lead directly to the concrete site announced by the campaign, so it’s easier for the customer to reach that place and buy the product or service.
There can be several calls to action, but the ones that are not related to the main purpose of the email shouldn’t stand out so they don’t distract the client from the important content.
Social media buttons
All of our channels of communication should be included in the mails to increase our effectiveness. Integrating every single mean shows a positive community image to our clients and strengthens our communication strategy.
Unsubscribing links
It is basically a little link, usually located at the end of the content. Not including it might lead us to some trouble; it is established by law that we must incorporate a possibility to unsubscribe in all of our emails, so we must not forget including it.
6# When do I send my newsletter?
Sometimes, all our efforts and the time put into creating a nice newsletter goes to waste simply because the user never gets to open it. One of the main reasons is because he will probably receive 15 other emails with ours, so we have to pay attention to the time we are sending our campaign.
There are two, let’s say, forbidden moments to send a campaign, and those are Mondays in the morning and Fridays in the afternoon. On one hand, Monday morning the client will probably have a pile of emails from the weekend, so he will be prone to send his emails to the bin.
On the other hand, Fridays in the afternoon, when people just finished their work and are looking forward to go home for the weekend, is definitely not a good moment to send our campaign, since they will probably not want to open it in that moment. When they come back to work on Monday, our email will be too low to catch their attention.
It is not recommended to send campaigns during the weekend either; people don’t check their emails as frequently. The best days are, thus, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Some of the latest studies reveal that most people shop online around 8pm, when their working hours have finished and they have some free time. However, to be even more accurate, thanks to the new apps and the statistics they offer we can furtherly study our subscribers and get to know:
- When are they more likely to be on the Internet
- When are the opening rates higher
- When are most of the sales made
Finding the ideal moment to send our campaign so we achieve high opening rates is key
We are now coming to an end, but we truly hope that with this information you have learnt what is exactly a newsletter and maybe even started to think about taking a look at some mailing apps and designing your own email newsletter template. Now that you know how to do it, jump in and join the mailing world!