You have been sitting at your desk, wracking your brain on the latest marketing strategies to improve customer retention, loyalty, and generate leads. So, you Google all your options, and suddenly, you have an idea to begin an email newsletter. However, you might wonder whether a newsletter email template is still relevant in 2023.
Storydoc states that over 90% of Americans subscribe to at least one email newsletter. Besides that, more than 70% of people subscribe to between one and ten newsletters.
Finally, you think you have the right strategy, but how will you execute it? Keep reading to find out.
Email Newsletter: A Brief Overview
An email newsletter is an email that will provide fans and readers that subscribe to your list with promotions, announcements, interesting content, and more. The type of newsletter you create for your audience will depend on your goals. For example, some businesses might use it to build a loyal following, while others may provide the latest updates and product information.
Because of this, it is crucial to have the right newsletter email template that can provide you with a framework to follow. Once you do, you will be in a much better position to create a stunning newsletter to help you achieve your business and marketing goals.
Reasons To Start An Email Newsletter For Your Business In 2023
Many people think email newsletters are dead, but that is not true. According to a survey of 1,600 marketers, email marketing is an effective element of reaching business goals and driving engagement. Here are many other reasons you should start an email newsletter for your business:
Affordability
Businesses are always looking to cut costs and better allocate their spending. You have a limited marketing budget and want to make the most of it. A great way to do this is by opting to create an email newsletter to retain the customers you already have.
For example, there are many email marketing tools out there that are free to use or start at low pricing. You can leverage these to begin email marketing on the right foot. Once you drive more sales and revenue, you can opt for the best email marketing service to create stunning newsletters.
So, think about the options available to you and then select the most affordable one. A newsletter email template will also help you save costs and create visually appealing and targeted newsletters for your customers.
Building Long-Term Relationships With Customers
Think about how you craft email newsletters because you must use your craft to build a relationship with your customers. If you are not focusing on this element, you will not retain customers for long. For example, a great way to build a long-term relationship is to show up with valuable information in your customer’s inbox once or twice a week.
When you start doing this, your customers will begin trusting you and have a sense of familiarity with your brand. You must get personal in emails because it directly reaches the inbox of your customers. So, with every newsletter you craft and send to your customers, ensure their trust in your business keeps growing.
Driving Sales
Ultimately, all your marketing efforts will be futile unless they convert into sales and revenue. Starting an email newsletter can be a fantastic way to inform people about your offerings without aggressively pitching sales. Let’s say you want to drive sales and nurture the subscribers you already have.
You can fulfill this goal by adding links to your products and services in your email newsletter while offering valuable information. When you craft a newsletter this way, your email will not look like a sales pitch and naturally encourage people to take the necessary action. This is why it is important to have a newsletter email template to help you with these aims.
Highly Targeted Emails
You can segment your email list and create highly targeted emails for your subscribers. Remember that your subscribers are unique, and each wants something different. For example, you might have subscribers who will not care about your product launches despite your generated buzz.
Some might only be interested when you have promotions or discounts to offer. It is good to monitor these differences and segment your email list accordingly. Once you do, you will send the right email to the right people at the right time, helping you minimize unsubscribe rates.
Personalization In Marketing
Email is a personal way to reach customers because not everyone can access it. Businesses must focus on creating personalized email newsletters as they drive six times more transactional rates. You can personalize the email based on the list you have segmented.
Then, you can create depth in the newsletter by catering to your subscribers’ needs and giving them a personal feel. This will ensure your subscribers think you care about them. In the long run, it will help you stand out and guarantee you can retain your customers for a long time.
Newsletter Email Template: A Step-By-Step Guide
By now, you are ready to create an email newsletter and send it to your subscribers. However, you require a comprehensive newsletter email template to provide a framework for what you must do. If you want to learn how to create conversion-driven email newsletters, keep on reading.
Explore Email Marketing Tools
Tools automate processes and make your life easier, which is why the first thing we recommend you do is select the top email marketing tools. Many are available that can have email newsletter templates, list segmentation features, and much more.
Remember to consider your technical skills, email marketing goals, and budget before you select a tool of your choice. If this doesn’t make sense to you, then you can hire the best email marketing service to design stunning email newsletters that can help with customer retention and loyalty.
Define Email Newsletter Objectives
As a business, you have a content strategy that you must execute properly to achieve your business goals. A good practice is to align your email newsletter objectives with your business to get the best gains. Here are some goals your email newsletter strategy can have:
- Lead generation
- Driving traffic to your site
- Getting more email contacts
- Promoting your products and services
- And more
The goals will depend on your business and what you want to achieve. We recommend that you figure out the objective and let that be the guiding force of your decisions.
Don’t forget to keep some key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your goals. These will help you understand whether your strategy is working or not. Some of these metrics can include email open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, and more.
Select A Newsletter Email Template
If you are unfamiliar with creating a newsletter email template, then we recommend looking for a premade template. You will find many premade templates in the best email marketing tools we discussed before. These will save you a lot of time and effort, as you will already have a template to work with.
Make sure that the content you have gathered for your newsletter is relevant to the template. You can take the content from your social media platforms, blog, training documents, and more. Be sure to gather content throughout the month so you can create a newsletter any time you like and send it to your subscribers.
Time To Add A Touch Of Personalization
The key to a great email newsletter is to make it personal, which is why you must add a touch of branding and personalization to the newsletter before you send it. Think of the template as a starting point for you to begin newsletter creation. Add your brand color, font, product images, and anything reliant to your brand to make it more custom.
Another aspect you must not miss out on is mobile user-friendliness. According to Litmus, more than 41% of people open their email on their smartphones. So, you have to cater to this part of your customer base and make it easier for them to open your emails.
If they find the email to be unresponsive on mobile devices, they will most likely not even open it on their desktop. So, be sure to make your email friendly for all types of devices and browsers.
Set A Newsletter Size
Picking a newsletter size can be tricky because you have to ensure the size works well on all devices and browsers. Everything from the size to the resolution must be compatible so users don’t have issues with opening the newsletter on any device.
Most newsletter email template tools will provide a standard size of 600px width and an email body of 30px width. Make sure that your design fits this width so you don’t face any issues as you send your subscribers list these newsletters.
Another thing you will have to adjust is the height. The general rule is that it should take recipients a second to scroll to the end of your email. That’s when you know you have the ideal size for your email newsletter.
Add Content
Now that you have your newsletter email template ready, it is time to add your content. Perfecting the content is crucial because this is what will hook your reader to your newsletter and make them stay. Keep your copy short but effective to encourage your subscribers to naturally click on the links you have added and take action.
You can also add images that support your copy and add more value to it. Have a team member or two read the copy to double-check and provide you with a second opinion and perspective. Then, you can make relevant changes and perfect your copy in no time.
Leverage The Power Of Smart Content
The best email marketing newsletters are the ones that make people feel they have been specifically written keep them in mind. Think of a friend writing a personal email to you – that is what your newsletter should feel like to your subscribers. That is what will make them click on it and even share it.
Smart content refers to the type of content that will show one thing to a certain part of your audience and something else to another part of your list. For example, you can have a smart CTA, depending on your lists. Your leads will have a CTA that will feel like they are talking to your sales representatives.
On the other hand, your customers will see a CTA that will lead them to buy tickets to a customer-exclusive event. Neither audience will see the CTA of the other. So, leverage the power of smart content to guarantee your content reaches the right part of your audience.
Create An Appealing Subject Line And Sender Name
Different things work for different businesses that send email newsletters. Having a sender name that looks like a real person can possibly increase your open and CTR rates. If you want to try this out, you can run A/B testing on it to see if it works for your business.
Make sure it closely resembles your business otherwise your recipients will be confused as to who is emailing them. Subject lines are another aspect of your email you must perfect. There are many practices you can follow for subject lines from using brevity to reverse psychology, and more.
Keep some practices in mind to have a starting point that you can use to run your A/B testing. And see what works best with your target audience. Then, you can keep tweaking your subject lines to have the best ones at your disposal for your business.
Use Plain And Alt Text
By now, your email content and newsletter is almost ready to go. However, there are still some things you need to do to make your newsletter perfect. Alt text is the text that appears when a picture is not leading on your site.
While the picture is loading, your recipients will know what they are looking at. Remember that if your CTA is an image, then your conversion rate will not increase unless you have alt text to support the image. On the other hand, you will also have to ensure your emails look perfect in plain text.
As you make these changes, we also recommend that you check the links to ensure they are easy to click. Besides that, don’t completely rely on the images and guarantee it is clear what the email is regarding without the use of images.
Send Email Newsletter
Now is finally the time for you to send your email newsletter to your subscribers. Research the various laws in your region and see if you comply to privacy and other laws before you send emails. For example, the EU has GDPR laws that deals with privacy laws in Europe.
In the same way, your region might also have such laws you can follow. Complying to these regulations will help you avoid any legal issues in the future. Then, hit the send button and wait for all the metrics to roll in to determine whether your newsletter email template has been successful.
Analyze Metrics And Make Changes If Needed
Wait for a few days or a week, and check how your newsletter did and what you should be doing next. Go back to step two, review your goals, and see how well the newsletter is performing for the goals. You can see what parts of the newsletter contributed the most to your business and marketing goals.
Once you have the important data, you can derive valuable insights from it and then decide the direction you want to take for your newsletter. You can make relevant changes to make your newsletter even better for next time and attract more subscribers while retaining your existing ones.
Final Thoughts
Now that the newsletter email template checklist is complete, we recommend that you hire the best email marketing service instead. You can focus on running your business while the service takes care of your email marketing needs. The Dreams Agency can take care of all your email marketing related needs and ensure you get conversions.
For more information regarding our digital marketing services, please book an initial consultation with us. Our dedicated marketing professionals will guide you to the road to success and ensure business growth.