Best practices for using newsletter campaigns as a content strategy
How did it all start?
In the early 1970s, Raymond Samuel Tomlinson sent the first email via the ARPANET system and thus started the era of modern communication. He was the first to introduce the @ symbol, thus presenting email addresses.
Fun fact
Gary Thuerek, a Marketing Manager at Digital Equipment Corp, sent the first commercial email in 1978 about spiced ham (SPAM) to hundreds of email addresses and thus became the pioneer of the email SPAM method as we know it today.
Is email marketing worth it?
Without a doubt, the answer is yes. Email marketing is valuable because it is one of the most effective ways to communicate directly with potential and existing clients. It has several advantages:
- Availability — most people use email on a daily basis and therefore the probability that the message will reach the recipient is very likely
- Inexpensive — email is one of the cheaper ways to communicate with a large number of people
- Personalisation — email marketing enables the personalisation of the message according to each segment of the audience
- Measurability — we can easily measure the results of an email campaign through various metrics, some of them are Open rate, Bounce rate, Click through rate, Conversion rate
- Automation — We can send automated emails for special occasions such as birthdays, company anniversaries, etc.
However, it is important to keep in mind that email marketing should be part of broader and analysed in order to improve and adapt to future campaigns.
How to start with a newsletter campaign?
Firstly, to successfully run a newsletter campaign you need an email list. Now, you probably ask yourself how would you get an email list. You have to create the sign-up form for the newsletter so you can legally collect email addresses. Never ever buy a mailing list on the market because you will have legal problems. Also most likely your emails will end up in the spam folder.
Secondly, you will need a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution like Mailchimp or HubSpot to be able to send attractive and responsive emails. These solutions also have a free version so you can try and find the one that suits you best.
Now that we have the email writing tool, the next step is writing the email :)
Start with a catchy email subject
The subject line is the most important part of email marketing. If your email subject does not attract the reader’s attention and arouse curiosity to open the email, all your effort are in vain because they will not even see the rest of the email.
Email content
Determine the topic and stick to it. Don’t jump from one topic to another because that way you will confuse the reader and he won’t know what to do with this mail except to delete it. Write briefly and clearly. If you already have a lot of information that you want to convey to the reader, do it by introducing him to the topic and using the CTA button to direct him to the web where he can learn more about it.
CTA button
It’s important to note that there are lots of different types of email formats and layout options, which affect the placement of your CTA buttons.
If you have a newsletter with multiple topics leading to different pieces of content, the secondary CTA buttons should be clearly aligned with each section.
Don’t forget the A/B test!
Wait… what is an A/B test?
A/B testing, in the context of email, is the process of sending one version of your campaign to a small sample of your subscribers and a different version to another sample of subscribers, with the goal of working out which variation of the campaign brings the best results.
For more details, you can read the blog post on how Lovepop and Mailchimp successfully did an A/B test.
Well done 👏👏
Now you know the basics of how to launch a successful email campaign. Don’t wait, go and write your first email that your subscribers are eagerly waiting for. Have fun and don’t forget about testing, it’s the only way to understand what your audience wants to read.
This blog post was written for the Content Marketing course at Algebra University and was inspired by Mailchimp and FluentCRM blog.
