An online following is a powerful thing to have when it comes to business. One of the best ways to grow and nurture a following is by putting out a regular company newsletter. People who are interested in your industry and want to stay up-to-date on your business’s doings will prove to be your most loyal customers.
It’s important that you make it easy for them to stay connected, which is precisely what a newsletter does. On top of that, subscribers are likely to share relevant news, such as an event or sale, with their friends and family.
In order to really get the highest payoff for your investment, though, you need to be smart about what you’re outputting. Here are the ABCDs on what makes a newsletter worth reading:
Audience
The content that you choose to send out will depend on who you are sending it to. Knowing your general audience’s taste will make a huge impact on whether you can keep their attention.
Let your future readers know exactly what your newsletter offers before they subscribe. Remember, no newsletter does well if it comes across as an advertisement.
Your goal is to be informative, not gimmicky, so a good rule of thumb is to keep the sales pitches down to less than 10% of the newsletter.
Brevity
Most readers are skimming newsletters to get the highlights, very often spending less than a few minutes on the page.
You want to educate and entice your readers to learn more by giving them easily consumable highlights. This way they’ll get the gist and will follow through to your website if they want more information.
Consistency
Reading your newsletter will become habitual for your faithful following. They’ll expect it to regularly arrive in their inbox, written in the same tone, with the same design layout.
Readers look forward to something that’s familiar. Newsletters are not a place to spring surprises, but rather you want it to be routine. In fact, it’s smart to warn your readers if there are going to be changes.
Readers will associate the reliability and dependability of your newsletter with your business practices so it’s of the utmost importance to do it well.
Design
On the back end, it’s essential to have a responsive design because your readers will be accessing your newsletter on various platforms.
Also, to avoid layout issues, use alt tags, which stand in the place of an image if they’re disabled on a reader’s email account.
When it comes to what’s on the page, remember that you don’t want to overwhelm your readers with gobs of information. To simplify things, have one primary call to action (CTA) per newsletter, with a few less obvious CTAs for readers who find themselves with a little extra time on their hands.
One last piece of advice!
Newsletters are about connecting with your audience. Interaction is an important building block for creating brand loyalty.
The best way to create a stellar and successful newsletter is to ask for feedback and respond to it. Your readers will appreciate your willingness to listen and will help you create the perfect newsletter for your business.