A good email – what is it? Rules for creating a newsletter
Newsletter is a kind of email that is supposed to build a relationship with your subscriber. The graphic design of the email should be consistent, and that’s why it is worth considering and preparing a template that will be associated with your brand or product. With each subsequent message, you will only change the content or graphics. Not knowing HTML is not an obstacle today, as email marketing systems have their own tools for creating newsletters, which are intuitive to use and allow you to make a high-level creation.
Message personalization
A good email is one that doesn’t end up in the spam folder. The message sent to your subscriber database should be best suited to the profile of the recipients. That’s why you need to segment your customers, which is a very important element when it comes to the effectiveness of a mailing campaign. First of all, ongoing analysis of the customer base is important. You can segment customers according to several indicators, such as previous purchases, loyalty, mailing activity and information they left, e.g. when subscribing to the newsletter. Use data on recipients and apply it to personalize your message. By addressing the recipient by name in the email subject, you get the chance to increase Open Rate. Whereas, knowing the gender of the addressee will allow you to tailor the offer and content of the message to their expectations. For example, when sending emails about a product from the household appliance industry, its content will differ slightly depending on whether you write to women or men.
An intriguing title
It must be short and to the point. The title of the email should consist of a few words, which will intrigue the recipient of the message enough so that they decide to open and read it. In the abundance of messages, short content will allow you to stand out from dozens of other emails in an inbox.
Engaging content
Since you now know how to segment your database and analyze mailing campaigns, you can assume that you know your target group to which you are dedicate your newsletter. Now, the time has come to look at the creation of the text, which is the basis of every message. First of all, remember that the time that a user has to read a message has been reduced. The recipient of an email today scans through it for keywords rather than reads the entire email. That’s why you should use simple language, avoid long, overly complex sentences which may be incomprehensible to the reader. Use short terms, associations and verbs in the active form. To determine the level of difficulty of the text, use the fog factor, i.e. the Gunning Fog Index. This tool will indicate vocabulary that should be simplified, so that the text becomes more reader-friendly. When writing the content of a newsletter, do not forget about the language of benefits. The right choice of words is of a certain value to the reader. Users should find in an email interesting information not only about the product itself, but also about its use, e.g. how a given product can affect their daily life or facilitate their work.
Encourage users to act with the help of call to action buttons that will transfer the subscriber to the website of the product or the full version of the article that you want to attract them with.
An effective email is one of the better forms of reaching the customer. Learning about its effectiveness will help you achieve even better conversion results in the future or optimize the costs of a mailing marketing campaign. There is a lot to fight for, as despite the emerging new marketing channels, newsletters are still a strong link in omnichannel communication with the client.
Valuable content
When writing a message, remember that its content is valuable to the user. Today’s consumer has got used to the fact that subscribing to the newsletter database leads to benefits – a discount, a free e-book or other extras. All newsletters must have a specific marketing goal, and that’s why the effectiveness of good email depends not only on its form and technical aspects, but also knowledge of the target group and its needs.
CASE STUDIES
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in Poland, we noticed that a common problem that parents face is offering their children creative leisure time. When remote work became common, and schools got closed, supporting working parents in animating their kids’ leisure time became very desirable. In response to the needs of this group, together with Magnolia Park, a shopping mall from Wrocław, we prepared an eBook for parents, which customers could print out and give their children to play.
The 10-page book encouraged to thinking logically, recognizing colors, counting, and also developing children’s motor skills. The game set was distributed through the mall’s mailing database, and sent to people who signed up as new recipients on the mall’s main page.
The premiere of the book took place on April 21 – intensive promotional activities lasted 2 weeks and took place only through social media and a paid campaign on Facebook. We have obtained 977 new records in the database. The average CTR of the campaign was 66.51%, and the open rate was at 73.2%.
