One of the most effective tools in the B2B marketing toolbox is email marketing. This is beneficial for generating leads, sharing product news, and building long-term relationships. You may have heard before that email marketing is dead, but we respectfully disagree. They are alive, well, and trending, especially when it comes to email newsletters.
We know, we know. You’re probably thinking, yawn, you want to help create another newsletter to add to the thousands already out there? Here’s what you need to know to create emails people want to read. Let’s start with the basics.
1. Define your goals
Now it’s time to establish why you want to create this newsletter.
Are you trying to help people? To share products or apps you found? Just for fun?
All are completely acceptable answers, but once you figure out why you want to create it, stay consistent with each one you send. Let’s consider someone who is looking for marketing tips and tricks. In this case, it will be someone just like you looking to learn, so establish yourself as a marketing expert. Take time to research and create quality content for your newsletter that helps your subscribers.
2. Get to know your audience
Consider who you are creating this newsletter for. This could be other marketers, potential leads, clients, etc. The goal should be to provide them with relevant and valuable content. Your audience wants to feel a connection to you, so focus on personalizing the content to them. Your educational content should involve something that will be useful to them and solve problems they may be facing. Having them feel like you’re talking directly to them will make them interested in reading on.
3. Establish your plan
Finally, you need a plan for how to manage this newsletter.
Is it weekly, monthly, daily? What does the layout look like?
Begin with your brand identity and build from there. You’ll have an idea of what the content should be after establishing your goals. Keeping your audience engaged is the key, but you still need to be informative enough to accomplish the goal you set. Additionally, you should understand your audience and the way they prefer to receive your newsletters. If you have people that don’t mind a little daily news, then go for it.
Now that we have the basics down, let’s get into the nitty-gritty about how you create a newsletter.
Creating content
Focus your content on the needs of your customers. Ideally, you are attempting to find out how your newsletter can benefit your audience or inform them in a way that can solve a problem. We recommend using storytelling to accomplish this goal. Telling a story allows you to communicate with your audience in a way that doesn’t sound like you’re trying to sell something or be preachy.
Your copy should flow like a conversation and be helpful. This also means getting rid of self-promotion and focusing on providing educational, relevant, timely information to your subscribers. Unless you have an exciting, big piece of news about your product, service, or company, leave it out. Imagine one of your friends telling you a story about what happened to them and see what you can learn from it. This is your message.
Optimization
As much as we all want our newsletters to be perfect, there will be bumps along the way. The newly-released iOS 15 makes it difficult to tell if an email was successful. The open rates aren’t going to show the actual engagement. It’s best to rely on what you can optimize to improve the results going forward. There are many ways you can improve as you start your newsletters. This could be using a different subject line or CTA option.
Changing the visual presentation of your newsletter is important too, especially when people are either using light or dark mode on their phones or computers. Even the slightest change in the colors or visuals can make a night or day difference (literally!). The best strategy for you and the audience is to optimize with what you know works.
Finally, keep track of who unsubscribes. People need an option to opt-out, so don’t trap anyone in your list (just make them feel the FOMO).
In the end, it’s all about making that connection with your audience in a way that helps with lead generation. Creating a newsletter can allow you to be creative—just have fun with it!
If you have questions or you’re still stuck on the idea of trying a newsletter for yourself, reach out to us, and we can walk you through where to begin.
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