20+ Best Newsletter Marketing Tips For Businesses

81% of B2B marketers say the most effective form of content marketing used is email newsletters, whereas 31% believe it to be the best way to nurture leads. 

No doubt, newsletters for small businesses are one of the largest sources of audience engagement. 

They are higher open rates and build brand value over time amongst your subscribers. 

Newsletters work great for email marketing campaigns for a small business, whether your focus is audience engagement, lead generation, or sale conversions. 

So, if you are a small business, and looking forward to optimizing newsletter marketing, here are a few tips to help you with. 

Newsletter Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

Start With Deciding What You Want To Share

Everything must begin with what you exactly want to share with your subscribers through newsletters. 

You need to have a fair idea about what you want to communicate.

What kind of content are you going to offer to your subscribers?  

It needed to be very well articulated beforehand. It is also important because you need to reflect that somehow in your sign-up form as well. 

Some content ideas can be:  

• About a new blog post and how it can help your subscribers. 
• Any videos you’ve published or any other form of content. 
• New product launches 
• Projects you are working on and want to share details. 
• Freebies like pdfs, free courses, etc.
• Personalized emails providing solutions to subscribers

 Stick To Your Goal 

Just as you decide what you want to share, you must also fix some goals with newsletters. 

What do you want to achieve through your newsletters? 

This should be amongst the first questions that should pop up in your mind while starting out a newsletter for your small business email marketing campaign. 

Here are the goals you can think of :  

• Find new prospects for lead generation.
• Drive sales 
• Informing about brand, updates & news 
• Promoting a new product or service 
• Increase social media presence 
• Drive traffic to your website 
• Download an ebook

Actually, there can be many other goals your business can aim for. 

It is fine if you are struggling with what to choose. The basics are the same for all businesses; later, you can steer toward your preferences. 

Remember, your goals decide what content you will put there, what CTA buttons you will use, and also the lead magnet. 

Start with an opening headline where you introduce your goal. Further, you go into detail informing about what you want to convey. 

And finally, towards the end, you will put a strong call to action. You need to mention and emphasize on CTAs specifically. 

Consumers or Prospects should have clear directions on what actions they are supposed to take after reading this newsletter. 

Give Your Prospects Reason To Opt-in

You will not reach out your newsletters to many people if you can’t get them on your active email subscriber list. 

For that, you need to give reasons to your prospects to opt into your newsletter. 

Mentioning “Sign up for our newsletter’ or ‘ Don’t miss an update and other such phrases won’t work. 

You need to give them a better reason for signing up.  

Pitch people something with value. Offer them a good incentive to sign up. 

Use a lead magnet such as ebooks, video tutorials, or coupon codes to get them to sign up. 

Check this above example from the Land’s End website. 

According to their offer,  customers who sign-up for the newsletter will receive 25% off their first order. 

Well, this is totally going to make prospects sign-up!  

They even take it further, saying subscribers will enjoy exclusive offers similar to this one and much more. 

There is so much you can offer for signing up for the newsletter promo codes, free tickets to an event ( in case you conduct), free tools, and more. 

Remember, more subscribers means a bigger list which means a larger reach for your newsletter. 

Write For Your Audience  

You surely are the expert in your field, but your subscribers are clearly not. 

You need to understand that while writing newsletters to your subscribers. Explain everything in very layman’s terms and be descriptive about it. 

If you use abbreviations or acronyms, it is better to explain them too. Since you used to approach things in your industry, you are familiar with everything. 

But subscribers know nothing, and you have to assume. 

This will make your newsletters, be they from any industry, more consumable. 

Such content is celebrated amongst the majority of people because they look for content that is easy to chew. This can also become your unique selling point. 

 Keep It Short & Simple 

Don’t try to tell everything in the newsletter. 

You need to be very precise and specific with what you are approaching. Remember, people are busy; they don’t have time to read long emails. 

So it is better to write a short, simple and sweet email to communicate easily. 

Try to keep the readability high with your content. Write no longer than 3 to 5 paragraphs. It is better you use shorter sentences and conversational language.

Write in a way that even a seventh-grade can understand it. 

 Focus On Getting Newsletter Opened 

If you get your prospects to open your emails containing a newsletter, that itself is half a battle win! 

Getting your emails opened is challenging. It is essential to apprehend the statistics behind the opening rates of emails. 

Also, on what factors it is dependent. Analyze and understand why your emails are not opened or, if some do, why? 

It is a learning curve in email marketing to understand what works and what doesn’t. That’s why there is a need to do a lot of A/B testing with every aspect. 

But for now, you don’t have to go in-depth with this. 

To have your newsletter opened, follow these steps:  

• Write a subject line that everyone wants to click.  Don’t try to make it perfect. Just make it something click-worthy regarding your content inside.
  
• Timing is everything. You need to find the right time to send the newsletter. It increases or decreases the chances of getting emails opened depending on the time of the day.
  
• Avoid making it look like spam. Keep your email subject line toned down and not ‘sales.’ Make sure you’re ‘from’ email address is recognizable.
  
• Keep it optimized for all platforms. Most people check their emails through their phones and tablets. So your newsletter should be compatible with those.

 Sustaining Your Open Email Rates 

If you successfully get your email open rates higher, it is a half-battle win. But the real game is to sustain those open email rates. 

To sustain open email rates over a period of time, you need to build trust in your brand. It comes with the identification of your brand to your subscribers. 

An interesting subject, along with how much the audience trusts you, actually decides the open rates.  

But if you develop enough interest among your subscribers, they will be more inclined to open your emails. 

Sometimes even the headline doesn’t need to be very interesting. However, it is not suggested to leverage the user’s trust by compromising the content quality.

For example:  Think of a few email lists you’ve subscribed to that you open anyway, irrespective of the subject line, just because you are interested in them. 

 Grab Attention With An Enticing Subject Line

There is no way to get conversion from your emails if nobody opens them. We talked about above; the subject line is an essential factor for high email open rates.

So, that means your subject line can either make your newsletter successful or fail. 

You need to understand how using different subject lines can increase your chances of getting higher email open rates and hence more conversions. 

To support it, consider the following stats : 

• 35% of recipients open emails depending upon the just the subject lines 
• 43% of recipients spam emails depending upon the “from” of the email, name, or email address. 
• 69% of emails are sent to spam based on their subject line. 

Now, what does that tell you? 

Clearly, the subject line determines whether your emails get opened or are just sent to spam. 

So you need to make sure you write enticing subject lines that compel subscribers to open your email newsletters. 

So here are some points on writing an enticing subject line :

• Write personalized headlines. 82% of marketers tell personalized subject headlines resulting in higher open rates. 

• Use the subscriber’s name in the email subject headline. 

• Write a time-sensitive subject line creating some sense of urgency for subscribers. 

• Subject lines giving away some benefit or breaking news are also helpful. 

• Put something in the subject line that intrigues and increases your subscribers’ curiosity.
  

Write Like You Are Writing To One Person

You need to keep this in your mind while writing newsletters; you are not addressing millions of your subscribers in the list. 

You need to address one person specifically. You can also make up an ideal subscriber in your head, a persona to refer to. 

It will help you to write more intuitive, personal, and relative content that caters to everyone but individually. 

When a subscriber receives a newsletter addressed to his name and more in a conversational tone, he or she is more inclined to react to it. 

Make Something People Want To Read

Sending relevant content to your subscribers is different from sending them something that your subscribers want to read. 

If your newsletter is too personal or about your life, the audience will not respond well to it. 

Because at the end of the day, they don’t care about your life or the problems in your life. Also, they aren’t supposed to. 

They only care about how you can help them resolve their problems. 

So when you write your email newsletters, you need to be specifically focused on providing value to them right away. 

The content should be helpful and useful in practical ways. 

Focus more on resolving their issues rather than speaking your bit more often. 

And that’s what people want to read. They want solutions, something that adds value to their work or life. 

Otherwise, there’s no point for them to subscribe in the first place. 

Enhance Your Newsletter By Adding Visuals 

Images, infographics, and videos are the best way to explain any concept. 

Newsletters become more interesting when they just resonate with a user more intimately. And that begins with more engagement and consumable content. 

You can make any content easier and more fun for users by adding visuals to it 

Now, interestingly an average subscriber spends around 51 seconds on a newsletter whereas only reads 20% of the text. 

So, visuals communicate better for the audience. 

Why not then enhance your newsletters with more visual content rather than using tons of text? 

Even you can focus on using videos in your newsletter more often. Emails, including videos, get a 96.38% higher click-through rate than others. 

Send Only To A Certain Portion Of Your List At First

Whether you are unsure about what responses you will get with your newsletter or even when you are confident, it is wise to demonstrate with a few subscribers of your list. 

Instead of sending the newsletter to all of your subscribers, try sending it to a certain portion of your list, like 10% of your list. 

The responses you get here will tell you about what kind of open rates you will get, the kind of actions they take, and much more.  

If everything seems well, you can go further and send your newsletter to all of your subscribers. If not, it’s time to rework your newsletter draft or other aspects as well. 

 Be Consistent 

Surely you need to avoid sending too many emails to your subscribers, but you also need not ghost them for a long time. 

So, the solution is to find a schedule and stick to it consistently without any lapse. 

Don’t send two-three emails in one day just because you’ve missed earlier few days! 

Maybe focus on sending emails bi-weekly or weekly. Avoid going daily unless your subscribers are totally comfortable with it. 

The best is to send emails bi-monthly or even monthly. It seems to have the best open email open rates. 

However, if your subscribers are very well engaged with your content or newsletter, the sweet spot is called to be 15-30 emails per month.  

Having said that, don’t be afraid to try different frequencies of emails and see what works best for you. 

Pro Tip:  The best way to set an expectation for your subscribers is to tell them in the welcome email about how often you will be sending the newsletters. 

 Start With A Killer Opening Line

Once you get your newsletter emails open, you want to make your subscribers interested right in it. 

The next line should be something that draws their attention to read further. 

The subject line is surely the most important element of your newsletter, but the first line plays an equally crucial role in whether emails are opened. 

When the recipient receives the email newsletter, along with the subject line, the first line of the body is also visible. 

It also depends upon the browser and device on how many of the opening lines from the body of the newsletter are exposed in the preview. 

Since it also plays a significant role in the open rates of your newsletter emails, you must leverage it to attract users to click on the email. 

So what you can do is, first of all, address the recipient with his first name, making your emails more personalized. 

Avoid writing “Hi..my name is..” and other casual cliche statements. You must write something that hooks your audience to click on the email. 

It should at least further intrigue them in addition to your subject line. 

Also, getting right to your point is way better than making your newsletters more effective and easy to consume. 

Share Only The Relevant Content 

If you are noticing that too many people are unsubscribing from your list, it might be due to subscribers finding the content not relevant enough to hold on to. 

And if they don’t, they will if they don’t find the content relevant and helpful for them. So, it is something to focus on highly. 

Never discuss subjects or issues unrelated to your niche or industry. 

If it is irrelevant to your brand, your subscribers surely don’t want to hear about it. 

Also, stay away from any sort of controversial stuff in your newsletter unless your business or brand is in that space. 

One of the best ways to ensure you’re delivering the most relevant content is to enable subscribers only to choose what they want to read about. 

When you ask subscribers to sign up for the newsletters, you can ask them at the point what things they want to hear about from you. 

For Example, Envato Tuts provide email customization options while sign-up to set customers’ preferences. There are checkboxes to untick if you don’t want to hear about a particular type of content. 

Develop Connection To Your Subscribers in Body

Subject lines and opening lines are great to make your audience click on your email newsletters. 

But the fact is, you can do all the tricks in the parlor to get the subscriber to open your emails, but at the end of the day, you need to connect with him or her. 

And that required to be on a certain personal level. 

Surely, you are representing your product or services, but you need to show them how it can improve their life or provide value to them. 

There are a few points to remember while writing the body of your newsletter. 

First of all, continue the style and tonality you’ve used in the headline and the opening line of your email newsletter. 

Make sure you break your text into shorter paragraphs, even into one or two lines. 

Make the paragraphs easy to read, digestible and scannable in one glance. 

It is preferred you use a second person, that is, ‘you,’ to address the reader. 

Overall, your newsletter should feel like a conversation. 

Don’t be afraid to ask personal questions in your emails to make them more intimate. 

These questions depend upon what you are talking about, but it mostly asks how they feel about something, whether they are getting results, etc. 

FAQ ( Frequently Asked Question)

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