A company newsletter can be a powerful tool. It’s a fantastic way to keep clients and potential clients engaged and interested in your services or products, delivering relevant content right to their inbox on a regular basis. What’s more, it provides you the opportunity to demonstrate industry expertise and thought leadership, strengthen branding, lead more readers to your content, get the word out about sales and events, and simply form a more engaging bond with your audience.
If it’s not clear by now, we love newsletters! Read on to find out a few of our top tips for a more engaging, successful company email newsletter.
Keep content balanced
A newsletter’s primary purpose might be to promote your company and products, but it’s important to remember the interests of those who will be reading it. Too much self-promotion and your subscribers are likely to start dropping off like flies. To keep everyone interested, the majority of your newsletter should focus on informational, educational content with only a dash of promotional content. In fact, it’s usually best to think of your newsletter as a relationship-builder rather than a sales tool.
Hook them with a good subject line
Your subscribers might be interested enough to have subscribed, but that doesn’t mean they’re interested enough to open what you send them. If your subject lines are boring or monotonous, your open rate will likely suffer. To increase open rates, try getting creative. Write subject lines that are engaging in the moment and entice your readers with the promise of interesting, fresh content. Also keep in mind the length of your subjects – if it’s too long, important information might be cut off in the preview.
Be mobile
Is your newsletter mobile-friendly? If not, it should be. Depending on your subscribers, it’s likely that the majority are reading it on a mobile device. Optimize your newsletter so that it can easily be read on smaller devices, meaning that call-to-action buttons can be tapped without problem, images are supported by alt-text, and text is not too wordy.
Have one primary goal in mind for everything you send
The beauty of the newsletter is that subscribers can have a selection of content all in one place. From the sender’s perspective, however, it’s best to have one specific goal in mind that you would like to accomplish. Make it clear to your subscribers exactly what you want them to do by providing one primary call-to-action, with the rest of your content there to support it.
Keep things simple
Often, the point of your newsletter is to guide subscribers elsewhere, like a blog post. If your copy is cluttered or lengthy, they might give up before clicking through, or simply not feel the need to click through. Keep copy concise and think of it as an appetizer, whetting their appetite so that they need to click through to get the full meal.
Stick to a schedule
This one’s easy. If you say that your newsletter is weekly, make sure it’s actually weekly. Pick a schedule and stick to it, lest you want your subscribers to think of your company as flaky and unreliable.
Looks matter
Just as your copy needs to be concise and uncluttered, the actual design of your newsletter should be too. Don’t overload your subscribers with an onslaught of words and images. Do do everything you can to make sure your subscribers can quickly scan and spot your call-to-action. This means that bullet points, plenty of white space, and short paragraphs all work wonders.
Research and experiment
What works for one company might not work for another. With a little A/B testing, you can narrow down on what works for you and your subscribers. Try changing one variable at a time, such as subject lines, until you can get a clear picture of what your subscribers want and how you can best give it to them.
There you have it, 8 simple tips to help get your company newsletter on its way to bigger, better things. In the meantime, you can check out our own Ink Tank Media newsletter here, or contact us with any questions you might have. Happy mailing!
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