Creating an Email Newsletter for Enhanced Client Engagement

A recent study by HubSpot states that 81% of all B2B marketers said that newsletters are the most used form of content marketing. 

Newsletters are one of the main components of mail marketing. From customer engagement and value addition to attracting new customers and generating higher revenue–newsletters serve all the essential purposes for a business.

If you are searching for guides on how to create an email newsletter, search no more. We have brought you a detailed guide to help you create compelling mail newsletters in 7 easy steps.

So, without anticipating any longer, let's jump in to step up your marketing game!

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A Brief Introduction to Email Newsletters

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If you are even remotely associated with web marketing, you are already familiar with mail newsletters. In short, mail newsletters are a form of web communication to reach out to customers.

Whether personal branding, business, or non-profit/govt organization, sending mail newsletters to prospects and existing mail clients builds brand awareness and a thorough communication medium.

You can send important news, details of a new product/service, product launch, upcoming sales, and many more. Blogs and websites use email newsletters in their email marketing strategy to increase customer engagement, market their content, and gain organic traffic.

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Why is It Important to Start an Email Newsletter?

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According to several surveys, 75% of a website's traffic never returns. So, how do you increase engagement and turn these visitors into customers?

Newsletters and other communication mediums help convert website traffic into subscribers. You might think that social media handles can also help you keep in touch with your subscribers, so why specifically newsletters?

Let's explain this with a few facts. Even though we live in the social media age, business mails generate more click-through rates than Facebook and Twitter combined.

A survey by the Content Marketing Institute says that 81% of B2B businesses rely on newsletters as a trusted content marketing medium.

It shows that newsletters have numerous positive effects on B2B marketing, so let's check out the benefits of newsletters:

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1. Own Your Email List

Whether you have a massive Facebook group or a significant following on YouTube, at the end of the day, the platform is not yours, and you are always at risk of losing your business.

That's why starting a newsletter helps you curate your list of subscribers, so you don't lose your contacts/lists.

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2. Build Relationships with Customers

As mail is a personal outreach medium, newsletters help build an emotional connection with your customers. If you provide value to your customers, ditch the corporate talk, and make your subscribers feel good, you can build a trusted connection with your subscribers.

It helps in conversions and creating a loyal customer base.

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3. Consistency in Sales

Newsletters work as subtle sales pitches. A well-crafted newsletter campaign can do wonders if you add value to people. It can drive consistent sales through affiliate links or links to your services/products at the end of the informative newsletter.

This way, you can avoid aggressive sales pitches and still generate sales to scale your business.

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4. Tailored Content for Targeted Customers

Segmenting your mail list helps you send tailored content based on your client's needs. It lets you send relevant information to the right people and keeps you away from sending irrelevant content to your subscribers.

This way, you can reduce the risk of landing in spam folders, minimize unsubscribe rates, and get the most out of your lead/mail list.

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5. Most Importantly, It's Affordable

According to many business studies, it costs way more to attract new customers than to retain old ones. As acquiring new customers requires content marketing, sales outreach, and other marketing efforts, it's bound to be expensive.

Existing customers are 50% more likely to buy your new products and spend 30% more than new customers. So, if you have already created mail lists from your mail marketing campaigns, send informative newsletters to your prospects to generate sales.

The above-mentioned data shows that you can drive sales and generate higher ROI through a newsletter affordably.

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How to Create an Email Newsletter?

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1. Determine Email Newsletter Objectives

This is the stepping stone for creating newsletters. Even before composing it, you must determine its purpose and place in your greater mail marketing strategy.

Ask yourself whether the newsletter campaign is supposed to generate more traffic to your website. Will it help you generate new mail addresses and collect contacts? Or are you doing it to promote new products and services?

Once you are clear about its purpose in your marketing strategy, you are good to go to the next step.

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Understand Your prospects' Needs

Understanding your target audience/subscribers is the key to creating a successful newsletter campaign. Once you segment your audience, it will be easier to research their needs and market trends.

Once you understand what your readers want to read, you can add value to them by creating relevant content. Try to keep your content specific and provide solutions to their pain points.

Determine the Goal

The campaign's end result depends on your newsletter's purpose. Usually, the goal depends on the business's target and vision. It will also help you determine the key performance indicator (KPI) you want to track.

Here are some of the most common metrics used for a newsletter campaign:

• Mail open rate
• Newsletter subscription
• CTR or Click Through Rates
• Spam rates

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Set Specific Topics

Planning and shortlisting specific topics for composing your newsletter is similar to determining the objectives. Ask your subscribers (you can run a survey) what kind of content they would like to read and perform research on your competitor's newsletters as well.

Here are the key topics for a business newsletter:

• Product launch and promotion
• YouTube videos or Podcast
• Important news related to your product/service
• Customer feedback and metrics
• Feature stories on company culture and job openings

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2. Choose the Right Email Newsletter Tool

Finding the right marketing tool is as essential as creating an engaging newsletter for your audience. A suitable newsletter solution helps you to create personalized content, send bulk mails, automate follow-ups, and analyze the results.

As there is unnumbered marketing software on the market, it is pretty hard to choose the right tool for your marketing needs. Besides email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft Outlook, there are hosting platforms like HubSpot, Sendinblue, Optinmonster, Mailchimp, etc.

Although the requirements vary based on situations and purposes, here are the essential criteria you should check:

• Easy to use and intuitive interface with drag and drop feature to create newsletters easily.
• Extensive collection of pre-set newsletter templates with accessible customization features.
• Mail warmup and Ai personalization for creating personalized content. You can check out Smartlead.ai for creating customized mail content.
• Mail list generator and lead verification. The platform should also be able to segment your lead lists.
• Automated contact management system and CRM integration.
• A/B testing (split testing) feature to test your newsletter options before launching email campaigns.
• Real-time reports and detailed analytics.
• Optimal deliverability through whitelisted IP addresses and unlimited mail addresses.
• GDPR and CAN-SPAM compliance for optimal data security.

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3. Build Custom Newsletter Email List

An email list is a list of prospects' collected and verified email addresses. , this is a list of users who consent to receive your emails.

Creating contact lists with high interaction rates may seem confusing, but it is relatively simple if you follow a few steps.

The easiest (and quickest) way to garner leads is by adding a subscription widget to your website. To make your list more authentic, turn on the double opt-in feature to receive the email addresses of prospects who want to hear from you.

Usually, the homepage, white papers, guides, blog posts, and the footer are the ideal locations to place the widget to garner leads.

There are numerous email address generation and verification software on the market, such as Saleshandy, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Smartlead.ai, etc.

These platforms perform multi-channel research (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Email) to generate authentic, industry-relevant leads. Also, these platforms offer lead verification services so that your deliverability rates remain high and spam scores low.

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Beware of Buying Lead Lists

You may have already seen tempting ads for pre-made email lists. Buying email lists from third-party platforms are very popular as many companies think that email lists should be large to succeed.

However, that is not the case IRL. In fact, buying email lists is just a waste of resources. Here are the drawbacks of buying email lists:

• Your emails will reach people who don't want to hear from you
• The deliverability rate will go down.
• Your IP can permanently get blacklisted.
• You are most likely violating Internet laws such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM act.
• As you have little to no information about the prospect, there are chances of false personalization.
• Your emails will land directly in the spam folder.

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4. Segment Your Contact List

Segmentation of your contact list helps you target the right audience and send user data. It increases deliverability and click-through rates, skyrocketing email marketing ROI.

There are multiple ways to do email list segmentation. Let's take a quick look:

• Segment your lists based on your prospects' demographics. Identify your customer's needs based on gender, age, class, and company position.
• Organizing a quiz or survey is a quick and engaging way to segment your list. This way, you can segment your list and increase engagement.
• Check your email subscribers' past purchase history. It will help you map tier habits and needs.

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5. Craft Unique Newsletter Content

Always remember that personalization is the key to increasing conversion rates. Now that the email list is segmented, it's time to focus on the newsletter content.

Use the segmented data of your subscribers to write the newsletter. Based on demographics, write gender-specific product information and newsletter for age-specific customers.

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Although you will find thousands of newsletter templates available for free, don't use them as they are. Customize your newsletter content based on what your customers want to hear from you.

Here are some ideas on how you can personalize your valuable content:

• Create product-specific or category-based content for specific customers if you have noticed a purchase pattern.
• Some users look out for sales and specific times of the year to make purchases (i.e., Christmas, Easter). So, create a newsletter containing special offers, upcoming sales, and new releases for them.
• Create newsletter content based on your subscribers' lifestyle choices and geographical needs.
• Develop newsletters for dormant customers who haven't made any purchases recently, encouraging them to engage with your business again with special discounts.

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6. Focus on Designing an Attractive Email Template

The next step is creating an email newsletter template. You can create your own custom newsletter template easily in Canva or use the ones provided by your email provider (ESP).

Email marketing software such as Sendinblue, Smartlead.ai, HubSpot, etc., offer unlimited email newsletter templates to their users. Keep in mind that the newsletter should match your brand's voice.

Optimize the template with your brand logo, tagline, GIFs, memes, and images to make it attractive to your readers.

Similarly, you can also use a pre-built HTML email newsletter template or buy one from third-party platforms. Make sure that the final layout is responsive and opens on any device (mobile, laptop, tablet, etc.)

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Keep Images Attractive and Messages Short

This is the first rule of creating an exciting newsletter. While writing newsletter content, make sure your messages are short and catchy. Think of the email newsletter design elements and images beforehand so that you can create content accordingly.

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The Ideal Size of a Newsletter

According to a survey, among 2.6 billion email users, almost 1.7 billion users operate their emails from smartphones, outnumbering desktop users.

To ensure your email campaigns reach maximum deliverability, you need to optimize your newsletter template for mobile and tablet users. If you want your emails to render on any device, the recommended width of your newsletter template should be between 500-680 px.

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Color is Important Too

Not many marketers shed much light on it, but believe us; the color scheme is as important as the newsletter content itself.

Create your newsletter color palette based on your brand identity, logo, and demographics.

If you are sending formal business newsletters, choose neutral colors and optimize with your brand logo.

You get more creative freedom when you are writing an informal newsletter. You can use colors based on occasions, such as red for Christmas or warm yellow for Diwali.

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7. Proofread and Launch

Once you complete all the above-mentioned steps, it's time for the final check. Newsletters with typos, grammatical errors, or linking mistakes are very unprofessional, so make sure you proofread carefully.

Once it is done, your newsletter is ready for the final check. Here's a list of the things you need to check:

• Easy readability
• Compelling message header
• Small paragraphs
• Compelling content
• Clear subject line
• Mobile-friendly
• Legally compliant
• Calls to action
• Devoid of spam triggers
• Optimized images

Once the final check is done, your email newsletter is ready to get launched. Create a pipeline for newsletter launching and follow-ups, and automate the workflow through email marketing tools.

How to Create Email Newsletters: An Example 

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Subject Line: Hey {first name}, summer is back with fresh deals

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Hi {first name}, 

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I hope the last week has been a blast for you. 

We are here to welcome 165 new customers to our {weekly/bi-monthly/monthly} newsletter this week! 

This week, we’ll have a discussion on {the subject of the newsletter}. 

If you don’t want to read this or don’t find it valuable, feel free to unsubscribe here. You can also add your preferences, so we can send the newsletters you want to read. 

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Before we jump in:

{summary of the topic in bullet points} 

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Newsletter #{serial number of the newsletter}

{Add the newsletter content here}

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I hope it was worth your time. See you next week. 

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Regards, 

{Sender name}

{Brief introduction of the sender} 

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How Automation can Help Newsletter Campaigns? 

Gone are the days when we had to create newsletters manually, personalize them and send to the customers individually. Nowadays, you can automate your campaigns and follow ups with email marketing software. 

Many people confuse drip campaigns with campaign automation, however, they are not the same. Everything in a drip campaign is pre-set, but marketing campaign automation tools work in a very different way. 

Some of the best newsletter automation tools are mailchimp, ConvertKit, Get response, Constant Contact, HubSpot, etc. 

Smartlead.ai is one of the best email personalization software in today’s market. With big names as clients, it can help you create personalized mail content and land your mails directly in your prospect’s inbox. 

Benefits of Newsletter campaign Automation

• Automation of newsletter campaigns creates personalized content for each individual customer based on their previous data. As personalized content is appealing, it increases engagement. 
• Newsletter campaign automation means less work for your marketing team. I mean they can focus on sealing deals with customers without worrying about sending follow-up emails manually. 
• Automation helps you cut costs for your marketing needs. Most of the subscription-based automation tools can perform all the stages of newsletter campaigns effectively. 
• The responsiveness is higher than humans, naturally. Your clients won’t have to wait for days to get a reply. These tools are fast, efficient, and make sure you don’t lose any clients. 
• As these platforms offer live tracking of campaigns, detailed reports, and prediction-based market analysis, you can create useful marketing strategies and scale your business. 

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Conclusion

That's all, folks–you have learned how to create an email newsletter.

Newsletters are essential to our email marketing campaigns to increase engagement with your readers, build trust among your customers, and increase sales.

It may seem complex at first, but creating an email newsletter is as much fun as it challenges you. So, follow these steps to make a newsletter to step up your marketing game.

Smartead.ai offers an AI-powered writing feature that helps you create personalized email copies. Also, you can generate leads through multi-channel research and verify them through this fantastic platform.

We'll be back with more informative guides.

Till then, goodbye!

FAQs

1. How can I create personalized email content?

Instead of writing generic emails or using a pre-set template, customize your emails with personalization based on your email subscribers' interests and needs. Perform your research on every client and write engaging copies.

You can try Smartlead.ai to help you create personalized emails based on each of your prospect's data. It enables you to identify spam triggers and ensures high deliverability.

2. What should you include in an email newsletter?

The first thing that catches email recipients' eyes is the marketing email subject line. So, focus on writing an intriguing subject line for your newsletter email. The email content should be short and crisp. 

Always try to add value to your clients and optimize the content with brand logos, taglines, GIFs, enticing templates, and compelling calls to action. Lastly, don't forget to add an unsubscribe button to stay GDPR and CAN-SPAM compliant to keep your email address out of the spam folder.