Despite the fact that all directions still point at the world of social media, this doesn’t take away the relevance of email. As it stands, email is still regarded as one of the most popular forms of online communication, and this is not changing anytime soon, as it is perceived to have come to stay.
As a marketer, it is important you take this up with all excitement. A digital newsletter provides you with that excellent opportunity to link up with your audience, which in turn drives engagement and sales. And if you are looking for an effective way of building brand awareness and affinity, this is one exciting tool you can rely on. With newsletters, you can effectively influence the people on your email list and get the sales results you want. All you need to achieve this is to come up with a great newsletter.
As it stands, the average conversion rate sits around 1 percent, which is large as a result of poorly crafted email marketing which people are inundated with. Basically, what you need to turn this marketing tool into a powerful engine for sales, is to create an exciting newsletter that gives people what they want, what meets their desire.
If you are thinking of how to get started, here is how.
- COME UP WITH AN EXCITING SUBJECT LINE
What appears as the biggest challenge in email marketing is how to make people actually read whatever is being sent to them. To achieve this, the perfect way is to get their attention by coming up with an enticing subject line. There’s no shortcut to this, the two things you should always have in mind, are to be personal and relevant. From the subject line, people can tell if promotional emails are exaggerated from miles away, and if yours falls in this category they will ignore it, or even, get it marked as spam.
Also, another thing you should consider is knowing the reason why people gave you their email addresses in the first place. Clarify if it was for promotions or information, and get to know what they want exactly. Are they looking out for discounts and bundle deals? Or what they want is resources on how to get the best result from the products they buy from you? These are things you should be clear about.
So it is important that you carry out your research by first asking about people’s expectations, and what they need. But also you can do some testing, by sending out two different newsletters with different subject lines. After this is done, the next step is to compare open rates. Whichever does better in getting the attention/connecting with people, should become the standard moving forward.
- FOCUS SPECIFICALLY ON THE DESIGN
After you might have won the battle of making someone open your email, all you have is a few seconds to grab their attention and get them to follow through on your call to action. To achieve this, the design is critical. Ensure you come up with a newsletter with a clear visual hierarchy. Your newsletters should have a specific purpose. It could be that you want people to get your eBook, or possibly you are creating awareness around a certain product. Stay away from disturbing people with attention-getting content, as it doesn’t do anything resourceful, rather than confuse the reader. The focus should be on keeping things simple and clear.
Still on this, always ensure that the layout is clean. Avoid having too much in one space. Always have it at the back of your mind that a larger percentage of people will not read through the newsletter like a book. Instead, they are going to flick through to find what’s associated with them. You can come up with an idea of segmenting the different items into a simple description and image, using the “Continue reading or read more” button as a way of keeping the newsletter attractive, and also of convincing them to check out the website.
In addition, ensure you highlight certain aspects of the newsletter by making good use of colors and directional cues. Red depicts urgency, whereas blue is far softer. The most professional is black, although it does not necessarily make it your desired effect. You should consider hiring some design experts to help you get the best out of what you do, as this can have a major effect on the success of your newsletter.
- COME UP WITH GREAT HEADLINES
Just as important as your email subject line is in ensuring people get to open your newsletter, what your headlines determine, is if people actually read your content. From the first sentence, you need to quickly convey to them what they stand to gain by reading what you’ve sent them. If you fail at this, they will disregard whatsoever you have to offer and you have thrown away your chance at making a sale.
When writing headlines, consider yourself more as a reader than a writer. Think about being extremely busy or getting ready for a meeting, flipping through your phone. What exactly would make you stop and click on something? This is a psychological exercise, a challenging one at that. The most important part of it is to learn how to align your strategies with the needs of your audience. This is the only thing that can bring a rise in engagement and conversions rate,
- UNDERSTAND YOUR READERS
As a newsletter writer, you should always keep in mind the power of anxiety. It is always important you remember how hard people work for their money, and they only prefer to spend their money on what they need, rather than waste their money.
Once you understand this, a better chance you have connected with people and make them see reasons to make a purchase. Make them understand easy it is to waste money, the several options out there, and what makes your offering stand out. Properly tailor this to your content. This brings some sort of relief to the reader that will make them more comfortable with your brand and also with the idea of buying something from you. Ensure you don’t overdo it but make sure you add more of it into your content and you should see a rise in engagement and conversions.
- MAKE THE PROCESS AS EASY AS POSSIBLE
You only have a limited time to attract people’s attention and move them into purchase mode. While going through this process, ensure you are making it as easy as possible for readers. Don’t load them with so many links to choose from, or with lots of different offers.
Instead, get the best out of your design and content to ensure your calls to action stand out and are easy to understand. The idea of a newsletter is to drive people to take some sort of action, and they are aware of this as well, so be as clear as possible as to what that is.
Keep the design simple yet attractive and the content relevant, and this should help move people from their email to your website to get the purchase done.
