How to Use Newsletters for Marketing?

Marketers rely on a variety of communication channels, such as social media, webinars, and video campaigns, to reach their consumers today. However, you should continue to use the earliest and most effective method: email.

Emails remain one of the most promising channels for consumer communication, delivering a return on investment (ROI) of $36 for every $1 spent. Newsletters are the most common type of email that direct-to-consumer brands can send to keep their consumers or subscribers in mind.

However, individuals receive numerous emails from online retailers and newsletters to which they have subscribed. How then can you guarantee that they will open and read your newsletters?

This is precisely what we will discuss in this blog.

If you do not yet have an email list, visit this blog. However, if you already have an email list with at least 50 subscribers, continue reading to discover the best methods for sending newsletters that people actually want to read.

What are email newsletters?

Email newsletters are a type of email that contains curated informational content such as the latest blogs, product updates, resources, advice, news articles, and stories. In essence, you can include anything you want in your newsletters. It is an essential component of digital marketing strategies.

The objective is to provide relevant and valuable content to your subscribers, maintain their interest, and cultivate meaningful relationships. In addition, they help develop brand authority and improve communication with customers throughout the entire buying journey.

You can send your newsletters weekly or monthly, depending on the information you wish to share and how often your customers expect to receive them.

Why are email newsletters important?

Now let’s discuss why you need to send out email newsletters to your customers.

More coverage: The average person checks their email 15 times per day or once every 37 minutes. Furthermore, the preponderance of daily emails (126 billion) are business-related. Consequently, newsletters can provide brands with tremendous opportunities to rapidly expose their content, products, and services to a massive audience.

Increased credibility: A newsletter is an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise in a particular field. When you consistently provide subscribers with valuable, pertinent, and personalized content, you increase their confidence in your brand. In addition, they rely on your brand as a source of information, goods, and services.

Personalization: Reaching the appropriate audience increases the likelihood that customers will open and read the content of your newsletter. Email marketers can create personalized newsletters and deliver content, products, and services that subscribers are more likely to ingest by considering the behavior and preferences of their customers. Briefly, email newsletters can help you satisfy the needs and expectations of various segments of your audience.

Strong relationships: An email newsletter is typically not viewed as a marketing tactic, but rather as an excellent channel for communicating with and providing value to your customers. If you know who your customers are, are aware of their needs and challenges, and provide them with valuable, pertinent information that solves their problems, you are more likely to not only establish but also strengthen relationships with them.

High returns: Your subscribers have already demonstrated an interest in your products or services. They are more receptive to your marketing efforts than individuals you might find via social media or paid channels. This makes newsletters the most effective form of email for attracting consumers’ attention. Combined with the relatively low cost of email marketing, this yields an ROI of over $36 for every dollar spent.

Best Practices for Newsletters in Marketing

Creating and distributing newsletters is insufficient unless you adhere to certain best practices. The following methods will help your marketing.

1. Use a catchy subject line

Even though 49% of customers prefer to receive emails from their preferred brands, that does not mean they will act on every message you send. This is where an engaging subject line can be helpful.

The subject line is your subscribers’ first impression of you. It determines whether they will open and read your email newsletter. Ensure that it is appealing enough to attract the consumers’ attention.

Consider the following suggestions for an engaging subject line:

Your subject line will appear differently based on the device used by your recipients. Therefore, we advise keeping it as brief as feasible, between 25 and 30 characters or 6 to 10 words.
It should provide an overview of the information your subscribers will find in the primary copy.
Include the recipient’s or company’s name in the subject line of your emails. This creates the impression that the newsletter was created specifically for them.
Avoid the word “newsletter” if you do not want your open rates to decrease.
Use emoticons to add excitement to your subject lines. However, be cautious about how and how much you use them.
Pose a query in the subject line to pique the reader’s interest.

2. Make your emails mobile-friendly

Considering that approximately half of all emails are accessed on mobile devices, a newsletter with a mobile-responsive layout is no longer an option; it’s a necessity. This involves ensuring that your newsletter appears well on both desktop and mobile screens.

Here are some suggestions for optimizing your communications for mobile devices:

Keep your subject lines between 25 and 30 characters to ensure that they appear well on mobile devices.
Ensure that your writing is concise. Utilizing bullet points, brief paragraphs, etc., divide it into easily digestible segments. This facilitates your subscribers’ ability to peruse your newsletter, comprehend your message, and take the desired action.
Not all mobile devices automatically display images. Therefore, use alt text to describe the image. Also, avoid using images with a high file size, as this will slow down page launch times.
People who monitor their email on their mobile devices are frequently busy or on the move. Place your newsletter’s call-to-action near the top to save readers’ time and get to the point swiftly.

3. Consider the design

Design is the most undervalued aspect of email newsletter creation. Not only does optimizing the design make your newsletter more appealing, but it also enhances its readability and increases interactions and engagement.

Here’s how to appropriately format your newsletters:

Make your writing concise and readable.
Use white space to make newsletters more aesthetically pleasing.
Use clear and succinct CTA buttons. In addition, colorful CTA icons can stand out from the page, making them more visible to the audience.
Include your logo, website link, and social profile connections to maintain brand consistency in your emails.
Use a consistent design for all newsletters so that readers can readily recognize them based on the design alone.
Use fonts and colors that are readable on a variety of devices. You may use the colors of your brand, but not all colors provide a pleasant reading experience.

4. Structure your emails well

Next, ensure that your newsletters have a distinct structure unless you want them to appear as a block of unstructured text. Before creating your newsletter, you must incorporate the following elements:

Template: Choose a pre-designed template provided by your email marketing tool, or have your web designer create an HTML template for future newsletters. Make sure that whatever you choose appears professional and is consistent with the visual identity of your brand.
Design: The colors, illustrations, and fonts used in your newsletters should make it easy for subscribers to recognize your brands. Easy-to-read and well-organized emails can significantly improve your email engagement metrics. Additionally, ensure that every visual is pertinent to the text and not unprofessional.
Sender’s name: This is the first thing your subscribers see and one of the first factors spam filters evaluate before allowing an email into the inbox. Therefore, use a name that is dependable, readily recognizable, and consistent across all emails. You can increase brand awareness by using your brand name. Alternatively, use your actual name for a cordial appeal.
Subject line: This is one of the most important aspects of your newsletter because it determines whether or not the recipient opens the email. If it lacks sufficient appeal, they will simply disregard it.
Copy: This section of your newsletter contains the majority of the information. A combination of marketing content and high-quality educational content is an ideal combination.
Calls to action (CTAs): These encourage subscribers to take the desired action, such as visiting a blog, filling out a form, or watching a video. You may include CTA icons and links in the newsletter’s promotional section. Also, avoid spamming your subscribers with multiple calls to action. Use the one that is sufficient to increase engagement.
Unsubscribe links: Provide your subscribers with the option to unsubscribe from your email list at all times.

5. Follow the optimized sizes

Unfortunately, when you send email newsletters, they are not always the optimal size. In fact, the size of a newsletter depends on the device or service used by the subscriber to access and read emails.

If the size is incorrect, your newsletter will not be visible to your subscribers and will load slowly. They would have to navigate right and left to read your emails, resulting in a negative user experience and a dramatic decrease in click-through rates.

Here’s how to prevent it:

Maintain a 600-pixel-wide email width, as this is the standard dimension used by most email service providers for all devices. You can also test and adjust the sizes based on the screen resolution and devices your subscribers employ.
The length of your newsletter is entirely at your discretion. However, people are less likely to peruse your email to completion or click through to your website if it is endless. Therefore, emphasize quality over quantity.
Avoid using large image files, as they load slowly or fail to load at all. Maintain image file sizes between 600 and 800 kb.

6. Use email segmentation

Many companies believe that all subscribers should receive identical content. But if you only provide them with generic information, there is little chance that they will benefit from it.

If your organization serves multiple vertical markets, it may be prudent to segment your consumers and create unique content for each group. In addition to increasing your revenue by 760 percent, it can also increase your open rate to 14.31% and click-through rate to 100.95%.

Numerous factors, such as demographics, purchase history, inactive customers, signup source, interests and preferences, engagement level, etc., can be used to segment your subscribers; the only stipulation is that this segmentation should allow you to make the email and its contents more relevant to each audience segment.

For instance, you can send loyal customers thank-you emails or product recommendation emails, and you can send new customers vouchers and discounts for their first purchases.

7. Time your newsletters well

You’ve crafted a gorgeous newsletter with an engaging subject line, engaging content, and a powerful call to action. However, your email click-through rate is minimal. Why? Perhaps your timing is off.

People receive numerous emails from various firms, and those at the top receive the most engagement. Therefore, it is essential to send your newsletters at the optimal period. Sending an email at the optimal time can increase your open and click-through rates, whereas an email sent at the incorrect time will lose its value and is likely to be ignored by your readers.

How to determine the optimal time to distribute your email newsletters:

Determine the time zone of your subscribers and send emails at a suitable time for them, as opposed to a time that is convenient for you.
Determine when your audience checks their email and what device they use. Do they check their correspondence during business hours or after hours? Do they peruse newsletters during the week or on the weekend?
Ensure that you submit your newsletters consistently, whether weekly, monthly, quarterly, or at a frequency that suits you.

8. Find the right email marketing tool

Previously, Excel sheets connected to an email provider were used to administer subscriber lists and send newsletters. However, as the number of email recipients grows daily, you need something more comprehensive and effective to streamline the entire process.

With an email marketing tool, you can simultaneously write, design, and send newsletters to a large number of subscribers. In addition, you can manage your subscribers, measure the success of each newsletter, and do much more — all from a single platform. These tools include a variety of features, including in-built customizable templates, A/B testing, analytics, and intelligent content.

Not all email marketing services are identical. You must choose the one that meets your company’s specific requirements. Before selecting one, you should consider a number of factors, such as integrations, price, features, usability, subscriber limit, etc.

10 Free email marketing tools for your newsletters

Following is a list of the best free email marketing tools that you can use for newsletter marketing:

1. HubSpot Email Marketing

HubSpot, perhaps best known for their marketing automation platform, has just released a free email marketing tool that can support a variety of transactional email requirements for small businesses.

The free version of HubSpot Email Marketing can send kickback emails from prospect offers, thank you emails after a purchase, or simply promote current campaigns. The simplicity of HubSpot’s free email tool is one of its finest features. The tool features a convenient drag-and-drop visual editor, and it also comes equipped with ready-made templates to get you up and running immediately.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a market leader in email marketing tools, as you are likely aware. Their free plan includes fundamental email marketing capabilities, such as email creation and scheduling. This is an excellent email marketing tool because of its intelligent recommendations, which provide you with valuable audience insights to optimize your marketing efforts.

3. Sender

Sender is one of the finest free email marketing tools on the market due to its deliverability features. It enables you to create outstanding newsletters without knowing HTML. Simply select a template and personalize it with elements such as images, videos, and text. You can even customize your newsletters for each recipient to increase their effectiveness.

4. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a marketing communication platform that includes email marketing tools as well as customer relationship management and landing page creation. With more than 70 design templates, Sendinblue’s email design functions make it simple to create professionally designed emails. In addition, each of these templates is responsive, and you can evaluate the results to ensure that your design appears as intended on any screen size.

5. Omnisend

Omnisend is an advanced e-commerce marketing platform that incorporates all of your communication platforms in a single location. Its free plan is more than sufficient to support the email marketing efforts of small and medium-sized enterprises. It enables you to automate email delivery using behavioral triggers and easily schedule communications based on the convenience of your consumers.

6. SendPulse

SendPulse markets itself as a multi-channel marketing platform, but email marketing is its most popular feature. It includes a large number of professionally-designed email templates that can be readily modified using a drag-and-drop editor. You can then configure these emails to be sent automatically at the appropriate time based on user behavior, event trigger, and other variables.

7. Benchmark Email

Benchmark Email is an excellent option for an email marketing tool that allows you to create responsive emails that appear great on any device. You can even alter the image directly on the platform if you need to add images to your email. The email editor permits the addition of effects, icons, and text for more effective communication.

8. MailerLite

MailerLite is distinguished from other free email marketing tools on the market by its sophisticated landing page builder and pop-up customizer. In addition to fundamental features such as a drag-and-drop email builder, the tool includes a rich text editor and an integrated photo editor for the creation of stunning emails.

9. Mailjet

Mailjet includes intuitive and collaborative tools to facilitate the creation of effective email marketing campaigns. Customize any of the pre-designed email templates and generate responsive emails to dazzle any recipient on any device. If you work in a team, you will appreciate the platform’s real-time collaboration feature, which enables seamless collaboration.

10. Moosend

Moosend is an excellent email marketing tool that allows you to automate and save time on repetitive duties. You can design behavioral email campaigns based on your subscribers’ information and/or actions. Using its sophisticated segmentation capabilities, you can send highly targeted emails to each recipient, thereby increasing open rate, click-through rate, and ROI.

Closing Thoughts on Newsletter Marketing

Newsletters have proven to be an effective marketing tool, allowing businesses to communicate with their audience in a direct and engaging manner. Businesses can expect an increase in consumer engagement and brand loyalty as they continue to leverage the potential of newsletters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I send an email newsletter?

Email marketing is the most cost-effective and has the maximum ROI (return on investment). Best utilized for customer retention marketing to a and. However, avoid assuming that email is of minimal value simply because it is inexpensive. Negligence in your email marketing strategy will negatively impact your relationship with customers. Apply the same care, effort, and concentration to your email as you would to expensive direct mail.

What should a newsletter contain?

Your email’s content is what will keep recipients engaged. They will peruse your next two or three emails after signing up. If they enjoy the content, they will continue to read, but if not, they will unsubscribe or emotionally unsubscribe. Emotional unsubscribing occurs when a recipient does not pause to unsubscribe but continues to receive your newsletter and simply deletes it without reading it.

In your content, avoid praising yourself, your company, and your products. The consumers of today are skeptics. The most effective newsletters provide the reader with information of interest and value while avoiding marketing and sales jargon. If you provide thoughtful, helpful, and insightful information that is valuable to your readers on its own, you will develop a relationship with them and earn their trust, which will increase their interest in your products and services, as well as their willingness to spend money with you.

How frequently should a newsletter be sent?

It must be frequent enough that you are not forgotten, but infrequent enough that your readers do not feel bombarded. Monthly is extremely prevalent, and anything between two weeks and two months is acceptable. Also, be consistent; do not send two emails every three weeks followed by none for six weeks.