All of us have our emails loaded with newsletters, but how many do you open?
While newsletters can be great to market your business, sometimes they don’t serve the purpose you want them to. Almost all companies send email newsletters with many of not being opened by the recipient.
That is why it is important to make your newsletter as appealing as possible and to also follow some best practices to ensure you get the best ROI.
The presence of numerous newsletters of the same format can be boring for the receiver, if this is the case then they are likely to unsubscribe. You can make the best use of your newsletter by designing it in such a way that it attracts and stands out from the competition.
Another important factor to consider when you send an email newsletter is the selection of time. The availability of email and automation tools means email newsletters are constantly being created and sent, it’s important to know the optimum time to send yours.
Send email newsletter – What to include?
The design and content of a newsletter go hand in hand to make your customer want to read your newsletter. An unopened newsletter is a waste of resources.
Several core components should be included when you send an email newsletter:
Addressing by Name
If you create a newsletter and send it to a thousand people addressed as “Dear customer or dear client,” there is a high probability that it will not be opened or binned almost immediately. The personalization of an email will spark interest and create familiarity between your newsletter and the recipient.
Many email marketing tools will allow you to insert first or last names automatically using simple code, making this a no-brainer for your content marketing strategy.
Catchy Subject Line
It is easy to send an email newsletter but equally challenging to have people read it. The subject line should be relevant to your reader, unique and represent your brand.
Come up with innovations for each newsletter you send but keep a theme that helps the customer remember you.
Test your subject lines with a segmented audience and tweak each email to see what works and what doesn’t. Groupmail allows you to create various groups based on demographics, interests, location etc and this can be used to create multiple similar but different newsletter campaigns.
Mobile-friendly Emails
90% of the users aged between 25 and 34 use smartphones to read emails, and the ratio is 85% for email account holders overall. If your target audience is 25 to 34, you must know how important mobile-friendly emailing is to you!
Here are a few tips to keep your newsletter mobile-friendly while giving out all necessary information:
- Keep your subject lines short and readable.
- Add CTAs instead of long sentences
- Size images so that they appear correctly within your email.
- Keep your copy concise for your customer
- Leave breathing space in your email newsletter.
Add “Sharing” CTAs
Newsletters commonly consist of new policies or products added by the company followed by CTAs.
What most companies lack is the right use of CTAs to market and advertise your company in the right way. Add sharing CTAs to your newsletter to increase your audience.
Make your content usable and informative so readers will be happily sharing what you know.
Maintain consistency
When sending an email newsletter, you must be consistent in what you do. For example, if you are in the software industry then your newsletter should relate to news, stories and products about software and not the motor industry.
Don’t confuse your reader by including content that is not relevant to them, if you must leave space within your newsletter do so.
This consistency must also be the same for the layout and design of your email and when you send your emails.
Send email newsletter – When to send ?
Knowing when to send your email newsletter can be of great help in reaching your targeted audience. Late nights and early mornings are not the ideal time to send a newsletter email.
But when should you send an email newsletter?
- Studies conducted by Mailchimp and other marketing and email software companies have shown 10.00am-12.00noon to be the optimal time to send emails.
- This is consistent with Monday to Friday and your emails will have the highest chance of being open.
- Tuesdays to Thursday are the most important days of the week to send emails as they receive the highest number of open rates according to studies.
- Mondays usually consist of work emails, while Friday open rates are the lowest for midweek tracking.
Unless you have a specialist business that relies on the weekend it is not advisable to send email newsletters on Saturday or Sunday as open rates are at their lowest.
The above are guidelines based on studies conducted by third parties of which information can be found online.
The importance of testing your open rates.
It’s important to test your email open rates at different times on different days of the week. What works for one company may not work for another, if all business stuck to these times, then no emails would ever be open.
Use the tools and analytics provided by Groupmail to study and test the open rates of your emails throughout the week.
You can split test your groups and see what the results are and alter your email marketing strategy based upon these results. Get higher open rates:
- Improved email copy and content and
- an understanding of the best times to send your email newsletter
will result in higher open rates, a growing audience and a better ROI.
When starting with Newsletters it’s important to test and use the best tools available to make this process easier and understand the data which can be gleaned from testing.