How to Create an Effective Newsletter?

It is extremely important to make sure that your subscribers (both current and potential) receive exclusive and relevant information, which cannot be found elsewhere. By sharing trite content, you will surely see the number of your readers diminish quickly. Someone might even get angry and shove your email to the Spam folder.

Note that nowadays it is harder to protect yourself from information than find the way to receive it. Publish content your clients wouldn't want to miss, and the subscriptions will roll in. Ask your subscribers, what they are interested in and would like to read about in your future emails:

After you build your newsletter database, it's time to activate and segment it. Auto marketing will help you here. Numerous popular newsletter services, such as GetResponse, Userfox, MailChimp, Constant Contact, Market Hero and others offer an easy and customizable auto marketing setup.

Below I'll introduce steps of launching a newsletter based on our experience. Using these steps we achieved an average open rate of 30-40%. We hand-picked these steps through trial and error, and we share with you only what worked or still works for us.

Here's how our first newsletter looks like:

After a couple of initial emails, you will get a segmented user base. Now, you need to establish workflows for every segment based on the behavior of your subscribers and the goals of your email campaign.

Set up your segmented automatic newsletter chain so that every user receives relevant and interesting information, tailored especially for them. To do this, you need to track the behavior of your subscribers. In order to track it, send the most varied content in your newsletters and see who responds to what. For example, if you send articles on design, consulting and development in three emails, you will see which subscribers interact with which type of content.

This way, you can take the necessary data from the newsletter analytics and segment your base of subscribers even further. You will be able to prepare newsletter chains with information, tailored for a specific subscriber.

Based on our experience, we can say for sure that you should not rely blindly on any advice that you find online. Perfect is different for everyone. The best way to find what works best for you is to test different days and time slots and perform testing. Thursday night, between 6 and 8 p.m. works best for us, for example.

A/B testing will help you determine the most effective headlines, calls to action, images, texts and just every other element of your newsletter. This way, you will continuously improve the performance of your newsletters and reach higher heights with your newsletter campaign. Try to use different headlines and send one newsletter with different headlines contemporaneously to equal numbers of subscribers to see what works better. Let's imagine you have a newsletter where you offer a discount for web design.

There are various options for the subject of your email, for example:

1. Get a discount on design development today, our hottest offer is inside!
2. [Name], it's time to give your website a makeover
3. [Name], can you find a better offer?
4. What did Jack Sparrow say in the last scene of the Pirates of the Caribbean?

At the same time, it is worth remembering that newsletter is one of the ways of communicating with your clients, through which you form the image of your company. It is a part of your image on the market.

For this reason, no matter how lame it may sound, proofread everything you write and double-check it before you hit the Send button. Here at MLSDev, we use Grammarly to avoid grammatical mistakes. Also, we send a test newsletter to our team for double-checking before the clients receive the email. Two heads are better than one.

Following these simple four steps, you will be able to receive subscribers, interested in your newsletter and willing to help you reach the goals of your newsletter campaign.

Don't forget that every of your addresses receives tens or even hundreds of emails daily. For this reason, you need to think of a peculiarity that will help your emails stand out in the fully-packed mailbox. Everything depends on who your subscribers are, what communication style they prefer and what image of your company you want to create in your newsletter.

Below we will provide the main effective methods of maintaining the high results of your newsletter:

An email newsletter is one of the most effective and efficient marketing tools, but handling it is not as simple as it may seem. In order to create a really effective newsletter you need to do the following (minimum):

Remember that only a newsletter campaign that is constantly analyzed, tested and polished can become successful. Create newsletters that your readers will be waiting for with great enthusiasm, ones your clients will share with their friends and colleagues, and the ones they will never unsubscribe from!

May the number of your loyal subscribers grows with every post that you make and every newsletter that you send out!