10 Tips for an Effective E-Newsletter Campaign
E-newsletters can be an important tool in your marketing tool belt, but they can also be slightly intimidating. If you are thinking about adding an e-newsletter to your e-marketing collection here are 10 tips to help you get started:
1. Keep in mind what you want to achieve – Do you want to drive people to your website and/or business? Increase sales by including coupons or discounts? Introduce people to your business and help them learn more about what you do and why? Answering these questions will help you better utilize your newsletters and better target them to your audience.
2. Think about what’s in it for the customer – Are you going to include coupons or discounts for them to use at your business? Is the e-newsletter going to have interesting articles with important industry information? Basically – why should people sign-up to receive your e-newsletter and what will they get out of it.
3. Get permission – Not having permission (meaning the subscribers asked to receive this e-newsletter/e-mail) will cause people to ignore your e-mails and think they are spam – or opt-out of receiving your e-mails. How do you get permission? You ask, put a sign-up on your website’s home page, about, or another page that makes sense. Brick and mortar companies can have a sign-up sheet in the store as well.
4. Have good timing – Sending your e-mail out at the right time is one thing that will either make or break your mailings. Generally it is good practice to send your e-mail out on a Wednesday or Thursday, but we recommend testing different days and times to see how your list responds.
5. Use a reputable e-marketing provider – An example of this would be a company like Constant Contact. They have high e-mail deliverability rates due to strong partnerships with ISPs, a no-tolerance spam policy, and a leadership role in organizations such as the ESPC (E-mail Sender and Provider Coalition). With a Constant Contact account you also receive statistics for each e-newsletter you send out (opens, click-through rates, forwards, etc.). Using your regular e-mail account to send out your e-newsletters is not what that account is meant for. Sending out so many e-mails at once at regular intervals can cause your e-mail account to be black-listed. That means that you will not be able to send or receive any e-mails for that account because it has been deemed as a spam account.
6. Send at set intervals – Set a schedule to send out your e-newsletters and keep as close to that schedule as possible. Consistency is the key to success.
7. Maintain a consistent look and feel – When designing your e-newsletter template be sure to maintain your company look and feel with consistent logos, colors, wording, etc. Make sure that this component of your company is branded just like the other pieces that you use for communications. They all should look and feel like one cohesive unit.
8. Include links in articles – When writing your articles, keep them short – like a teaser – and add links that go back to a page on your website that has the full article. This will help drive traffic to your website and will also increase content on your website since those articles will be housed there. Besides the article links, include links to other pages of your website that you think the receiver would find important/useful.
9. Test. Test. Test. – Make sure to test your e-newsletter with multiple e-mail programs (Outlook, Mail, Gmail, etc.) so that the e-newsletter appears and works correctly. Testing subject lines, content, layout, lists, etc. is also highly recommended to optimize your e-marketing efforts. When you find something that outperforms something else, use it, and then try to beat it.
10. Don’t forget about social media – Include social media links to your Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, etc. These links, just like the links to your website, will help drive traffic to your social media outlets. Also sharing your e-newsletter via social media will increase interest and more subscribers.
Are you ready to get started with an e-newsletter for your business? Click here to sign-up for a FREE, No Obligation 60-day trial through Constant Contact.
If you would like help getting started with your e-newsletter or with any aspect of e-marketing, give us a call at 608.519.3070 or shoot us an e-mail (info@theblugroup.com). We would love to help you.
