Here are some tips from 2013 on how to improve your newsletters:
- Write your e-newsletter as an email to a favorite client – don’t add graphics, don’t use headers or footers instead just keep it a simple plain text email. You’ll be amazed at the response. I did this last month and received over 70 personal email responses and over 30 meeting requests from potential clients. This keeps it personal and helps you avoid sounding like a saleman.
- Add a contest or giveaway – give your customers a reason to open these emails, keep it fun.
- Keep it simple, too much information and they will pass it by.
- Make sure you have one goal in mind and create a strong call to action for that goal in a color that stands out – to invite the reader to take action.
- Test it – send it out, look at it on your mobile device and make sure it looks good on a smart phone.
- Pair down the copy – take out all the unnecessary copy, keep it as simple as possible.
- Bold important concepts
- Use strong sub heads to break out copy. Think of those sub heads as headlines and take time to make them catch the eye.
- Send the Enewsletter from a Human Being – instead of sending it from Mannix Marketing, Send it from Sara Mannix, Mannix Marketing. Or instead of sending our Saratoga enewsletter from Saratoga.com, it might be from Valleri at Saratoga.com.
- Use an outside service: I’m still amazed to find clients emailing mass emails from their personal accounts. This is a great way to get your email blacklisted and you won’t have deduping and proper unsubscribes. So most likely, you are not following the law.
Original Post from 12-15-2008
E-Newsletters are a fast, affordable and highly successful Internet Marketing technique that can help boost brand awareness and your business!
With all Marketing campaigns, there are some strategic techniques you can use to provide higher clicks, and higher conversions. Below are some of my favorites!
1. Keep your Subject Line Short: Studies* have shown shorter subject lines of 35 characters or less produce higher open rates AND higher click rates.
2. Send on Sunday: Try sending out your email marketing campaign on Sunday night or Monday morning could produce higher open rates. The idea is that a lot of people are checking their emails later on Sunday night to get a head start for the weekday ahead.
3. Add Lots of Links: Include lots of links within your messages – a report by MailerMailer on November 2008 showed messages with 20 links or more had a sharp increase in higher click rates.
4. Include ‘Teasers’: Don’t give your user the full story – you are more likely to give a catchy teaser to a story that you can link to than giving everything away. After all, the main goal is to get more people clicking to your site to learn more!
5. Follow Up with a Shorter Email Blast: Have a great mid-month promotion, but only run a monthly email newsletter campaign? Don’t fret! Send out a very simple, very short email blast announcing just your one event – sometimes our quick and simple blasts announcing just one contest or one special has proven to be as successful or MORE successful than our bigger monthly news campaign.
6. Segment Out Your Email List: If you can segment out your list and tailor your campaigns as specifically as possible, you are more likely to have stronger conversions. For example, if you are a restaurant in NYC and you can separate out your list based on local addresses versus addresses outside of the city, you will be able to tailor one e-campaign to locals and the other to tourists.
7. Last but not least… TEST! What good is strategizing, planning, and executing a campaign and not testing to see what works? Keep a record of what teasers boasted greatest attention and what sort of subject lines worked the best. Remember, even though Sundays may be a good day to send out an e-campaign for a lot of different industries, your demographic may be different, so test your way to success!
I will leave you with this quote from the Email Marketing Metrics Report by MailerMailer:
“According to an October 2008 report by the Direct Marketing Association… By the end of 2008, it [email] will have driven $28 billion in sales and is projected to drive $32.6 billion in sales in 2009.”
* Study from the Email Marketing Metrics Report published by MailerMailer LLC, November 2008
