How to Create Compelling Email Newsletters that Will be Opened and Read

Tips For Perfecting Your Email Newsletters

Email marketing has become an incredibly popular tool to help nurture leads and maintain customers. But with so many brands sending emails daily, recipients are left with a sea of emails to sort through. Many people click “delete” without even opening the email. This is why it is important to optimize your newsletters and make your recipients want to open and read them. 

How exactly can you ensure that your email newsletters get read? Keep reading to find out!

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that utilizes the power of email to distribute content and promotional information amongst a brand’s existing and prospective customer base.

Email newsletters can be sent out daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, typically featuring a mixture of informational and promotional content. 

What Are the Benefits Of Email Marketing?

While many see email as an old-school method of communicating information, it remains one of the most widely used online platforms,​​ with over 4.5 billion users.

Email marketing also has an incredibly high Return on Investment (ROI) of $36 for every dollar spent, making it one of the most effective digital marketing strategies.

Additional benefits include:

• It’s cost-effective
• It helps keep customers engaged
• It helps to nurture leads
• It enables you to create targeted and personalized content
• It improves brand recognition
• It helps boost customer relationships
• It drives traffic to your website
• It’s easy to measure your success

9 Tips For Creating Effective Email Newsletters

Here are some tips from our email marketing experts that will help improve readership and take your email newsletters to the next level.

1. Optimize the Subject Line

Your subject line is the most important part of any email newsletter because it’s what gets the reader to click on your newsletter. Even if your newsletter has great, engaging content, it doesn’t matter unless you have a strong, captivating subject line to draw the reader in.

Play around and be creative. Come up with headlines that would make you want to open an email, and chances are others will too. 

2. Keep it Short and Sweet

With the average attention span being a mere eight seconds, it’s incredibly important to grab readers’ attention fast and get your point across quickly. 

Here are a few ways to do this:

• Use short sentences and paragraphs
• Separate your content using punchy headers
• Use bullet points and numbered lists 
• Include short snippets of articles and link to the longer piece on your website

3. Make Sure You Are Sending Them To The Right People

Before you begin sending out your newsletters, create a list of existing customers, leads you are nurturing, and anyone who has signed up for newsletters through your website. Email newsletters should have a purpose, so focus on targeting these specific people and create newsletter content just for them so that they are compelled to perform an action. 

4. Use Strong Calls to Action

A great way to keep people engaged with your email content is to strategically place strong calls to action (CTAs) throughout the newsletter. For instance, you can introduce a common problem that can be resolved by your business and then place a CTA for the reader to book a call and get more information or make a purchase.

5. Offer an Incentive

A great way to ensure people will read your newsletters is to promote your newsletter on social media or your website and offer an incentive to people for signing up and reading them. For instance, you can run a giveaway and announce the details in your newsletter or offer an exclusive promotion or discount code. 

6. Make Sure It Is Mobile-Friendly

Over 70% of people use their mobile phones to check their email, so it’s imperative that your newsletter is properly optimized to be viewed on a mobile device.

Before you send out your newsletter, test its mobile-friendliness by sending out a test version to yourself and opening it on your phone. Write down any issues you see and pass them along to your development team.

7. Make Sure Your Content Provides Value to the Reader

The best way to get people to continue reading your newsletter past the first paragraph is to provide them with high-quality content that provides them with helpful tips, how-tos, etc. For instance, if your goal is to convert leads into paying customers, use your newsletters to provide your leads with content with valuable information that would convince them to give you their business.

8. Follow A Theme

A great way to hook people in and get them to look forward to your email newsletters when they arrive in their inboxes is to come up with a theme for each newsletter. For instance, an aesthetician clinic could create content revolving around certain skin issues that occur during different times of the year and skin treatments to try before certain occasions, like holidays or back to school, while offering an exclusive discount or promotion for newsletter readers. 

9. Choose the Right Frequency

Nobody likes being spammed with emails, so make sure you aren’t sending out newsletters too frequently. Focus on quality, not quantity. Weekly can be a bit too much for some people, so aim for bi-weekly or even monthly. 

Work With An Experienced Email Marketing Agency

Whether you’re new to email marketing and need help getting started or have been distributing newsletters for a while but are struggling to get people to open and read them, we recommend working with a digital marketing agency with experience creating compelling email newsletters. 

Consultus Digital is a performance marketing agency with a proven track record for improving brand awareness, generating leads, and converting them to paying customers using various digital marketing tools, including email marketing. 

Contact our team today to learn more and get started.