Hey there, my dear readers! Are you ready to create a newsletter that will blow your subscribers' socks off? Look no further, as we have some amazing ideas to make your monthly newsletter stand out from the rest.
Let’s get started and go through the best practices for creating a monthly newsletter, as well as valuable tips to make it a fan favorite!
What Monthly Newsletter Helps You Achieve?
Despite hundreds of emails users receive nowadays, newsletters are still effective. Monthly newsletters can be different - just like the businesses that send them. They can include various content - from monthly industry highlights to articles, guides, and visuals.
When planning an engaging newsletter, one should be aware that its content should reflect the most recent updates. But before we dive into the intricacies of creating a newsletter, let’s address the elephant in the room - its benefits.
Here we have a list of what creating a monthly email newsletter can do for your business:
• Strengthening Customer Relationships: You might be surprised that maintaining customer loyalty is something achievable through email newsletters. They are a great way to promote repeat purchases. Plus, who doesn't love a good newsletter?
• Enhancing Brand Visibility: Monthly newsletters foster not only familiarity with your brand, but also the likelihood of choosing your products and services if needed.
• Demonstrating Your Expertise: Nowadays, positioning yourself as a trusted resource is very attractive to customers, so you can showcase your authority by sharing insights and analyzing trends. Flex some expertise muscles, will you?
• Increasing Website Traffic: Yes, people do click on links in emails they get, boosting traffic and SEO of websites and blogs. Especially if those are engaging emails, like the one you can create with this article!
• Streamlining Sales Funnel: The “news” part of the letter never stopped businesses straight up promoting their products. You’re free to guide subscribers toward making a purchase, and later we’ll discuss how not to overdo it by placing CTA’s correctly. But in the end, don’t deny yourself a little shameless self-promotion.
Two Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Start
All of the abovementioned benefits are worthy of achieving, but before you start delving into creating a newsletter, you should really ask yourself the following two questions:
1. What is the priority?
It’s essential to prioritize your goals based on what’s the most important for your particular brand. The benefits of sending monthly newsletters can be tailored to your needs. If, let’s say, you are running a business analytics service, you might want to focus on demonstrating your expertise and increasing customer retention. And if, for example, your business is media, you will prioritize conversion and partnership opportunities. Make sure to formulate the goals you want to achieve. It will simplify defining your newsletter’s strategy, frequency, and content.
2. Is it Feasible?
Now that your goals are set, think: is a monthly newsletter the best way to achieve them? Do you have enough resources to create and maintain one? In your specific case, the goals you’ve set might be achieved by a less costly marketing activity. Weigh all the pros and cons, and if you think a monthly newsletter might not be it, you can always go back to this blog post and start one!
Newsletter Content to Keep Your Readers Engaged
Now, let’s talk content. You’ve set your goals and established that a monthly newsletter is the best way to achieve them? Great! It’s time to decide what type of content subscribers will see when opening your “chain letter”. Decision-making won’t take long since we’ve compiled the three types of what your monthly newsletter can carry inside:
1. Company RoundUp News
You want to make sure your company has a lot going on if you’re resorting to this one. Important updates, current promotions, upcoming events, and much more can be included into this. Just tell them about the best things that are going on with your business. This way, you can keep your customers informed and engaged with your services and products.
2. Industry Updates
This includes news about the industry you operate in. Thus, it may be more relevant if you have a narrow professional business-oriented target audience. Nonetheless, sending industry-related newsletters will be effective for both B2B and broader audiences.
3. Curated News
Creating a curated newsletter precipitate carefully selecting what content your readers find valuable and engaging. Gathering online content from multiple sources, you must carefully consider the topicality that resonates the most. If you succeed in creating a monthly digest that tackles subscribers’ interest and spares them from surfing the web, the “unsubscribe” button won’t ever be touched.
Tips for Keeping Your Newsletter Relevant
After deciding what the purpose and contents of your newsletter are, one might wonder: how do I keep it interesting enough for people to stay subscribed? The answer is more complex than it seems, but here are three main tips that will help with it:
• Keep It Fresh: Even news about your company colonizing Mars won’t spark any interest if it was circulating for two months before being included in your newsletter.
• Don’t Miss Anything: You definitely don’t want to skip the news about colonizing Mars because someone will surely cover it. Be attentive to what is happening within or outside your business, and make sure to include it.
• Make it Unsubscribable: A counterintuitive advice that will make your subscribers’ attention reciprocal. Make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe. You don’t want to hold your customers hostage, do you?
Creating a Great Newsletter
Now when we get to writing and designing a monthly newsletter, it becomes obvious that the process is not too different from creating any other type of newsletter. We’ve already covered the step-by-step process of writing one in our comprehensive Email Marketing Guide. Here we’ll focus on points that are specifically essential to the monthly newsletter:
Visual Highlights
Your monthly newsletter will usually be sent once a month - and there is always so much to tell! The emails will tend to be long, so it’s important to adjust the design of the headline for better navigation. You want your readers to go through your newsletter’s layout smoothly, so pay attention to it.
You can use subheadings with the key information so your readers can skim through and choose the info they specifically want to spend their time reading. Also make sure to leave enough blank spaces to make your content easily digestible.
Keeping it Concise
If your newsletter is filled with topics, you’ll need to make sure your readers are not overwhelmed. Put just enough information for them to choose what interests them the most. Keep it to the point, include headlines and key messages to convey the most critical info.
However, this approach might lead you to giving away too much. Be wary of putting all eggs in one basket! If the goal of your newsletter is to generate traffic, give your subscribers little enough to arouse their curiosity. For example, you can include data or facts about outcomes, the context of which will make people want the full story.
Don’t Get Too Pushy with CTAs
We know, the temptation is too strong. After all, didn't we get into this to increase engagement? But to take an unrighteous path to put CTA buttons after every sentence means confusion for your customers. Focus on putting a couple of CTAs under the key items of your newsletter. The rest can be included as links within your headlines and body paragraphs.
Analyzing and Testing Your Newsletter's Effectiveness
Your monthly newsletter is meticulously crafted. The inboxes of your eager subscribers are filled. What’s next? Doubtless, you want to be certain about the impact your newsletter has. How do we know the message is not only reaching the audience but truly resonates with it? The answer lies in analyzing its effectiveness. We’ll show you the key elements you’d need to keep an eye on:
Analysis
Everything that happens to the monthly newsletter is measurable after it’s been sent. Monitoring your metrics equals maximizing your newsletter’s potential. For keeping track and analyzing them, here in Ucraft we use Intercom. It helps a great deal in dealing with open rates, number of clicks, subscriptions, deliverability and anger about being marked as “spam”. Intercom allows you to keep an eye on all these and much more. In that way, you can accurately adjust your strategy to have the best results.
Testing
Sounds like we should have put this paragraph before the previous one, but let's not jump to conclusions. Unlike only analyzing the metrics your newsletter has shown so far, testing is more of a “trial-and-error” thing. Except errors are not real and benefit your newsletter.
With the already mentioned Intercom, you can create two versions of one email, and send it to a small percentage of subscribers. One half will get option A, and the other half, respectively, option “F”. Just kidding, they’ll receive option “B” as usual. Thus, based on results you’ve selected, you can choose what works best for you subscribers.
Our advice is to experiment. Do it with amounts of text, topics, types of content and design. Experiment with every with all the features we’ve mentioned and watch yourself creating a champion monthly newsletter.
Conclusion: Stop Reading, Go Create Your Monthly Newsletter
Now that you have learned the basics of crafting a fantastic monthly newsletter, it's time to put these tips into action! Go for it and keep these three pearls of wisdom in mind: keep it fresh, don't miss a beat, and analyze results. Remember, your newsletter is an extension of your brand, so don't be afraid to inject your personality and have some fun with it. And don't forget to make it easy for subscribers to opt-out, although with your now-brilliant newsletters, why would they want to? They will surely thank you for it!