How to Write an Email Newsletter: 6 Practical Step by Step Tips to Get You Started from Beginning to the End.

How, if at all, would learning how to write great newsletter content improve your personal marketing skills and business marketing strategy?

What impact would — creating the perfect newsletter content have on your business?

Have you ever truly thought about the impacts the perfect newsletters can do on your business. Can you imagine the huge economic transformation you stand to get by just deploying the right newsletter to the right audience at the right time?

As reported by industry benchmarks, publisher newsletters receive a whopping 22% open rate. This is huge, and what it means to you as a content creator or a business executive is this.

A whole 22% of your email subscribers are more likely to open and read your content, unlike social media platforms where only about 10% of your audience is served your content and the fate of the remaining fraction of your audience seeing the content rely exclusively on what the smaller 10% fraction decide to do with it.

Well don’t freak out, what this means in a baby term is, when you publish content on socials, only about 10% of your audience will get to see the content first.

Whatever comment this smaller fraction says about your content determines whether the rest of your audience get served the content by the algorithm, that is, if this small first fraction like, comment, share, tweet and engage well with your content then the algorithm feels it must be relevant and then proceed to show it to a larger percentage of your audience.

So, if you have 1000 true fans on the socials, expect that about only 100 of your fans will get served your content at the first few hours of publishing, the rest of your audience getting to see your content is hinged on the validation from the 10%- the 100 fans.

However, with a newsletter running primarily via email, you are guaranteed of having more than 90% of your audience getting served your content. Adopting email marketing to deploy your newsletter gives you a higher conversion rate, as long as you serve the right audience with the right content and of course at the right time.

Now that you have an additional idea of why you truly need to be serious with publishing a newsletter to improve your business profitability, what exactly is a newsletter?

You probably have an idea of what it is but you are not completely sure what it truly is. Is it an advertisement content solely created with the aim of business promotion or it’s simply a communication delivery channel to converse with your audience with the aim of growing your relationship with them?

Before we get right into how to write the perfect newsletter that gets open and read by those who it is truly meant for,

What is a Newsletter?

Before I got into content marketing as a profession, I had no idea what a newsletter was neither did I know what it was used for. To make the matter worse, even when I had started content marketing, as a newbie I still didn’t understand what it truly was.

What did I know a newsletter to be even as a young content marketing professional, a newsletter to me then was simply a letter that highlights special news that is served to the public, I mean somewhere in my archaic mind I felt a newsletter was a news report you write in a formal letter format, something like you accompanying a news piece with the “dear sir/dear ma” salutation form, work addresses and other elements that comprise a formal letter.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long before I threw away that incorrect theory, and this started when I began to implement email marketing practices in my personal online business and in the company I work with.

From those moments to this present time, I have written a significant number of newsletters, discovered several common and unfamiliar mistakes that many new content creators, even professional creators oftentimes commit.

So, what is a newsletter; simply put it’s a report or document that is used to communicate news of the activities of a business or an organization, and that is usually sent to the employees, customers, and partners of the business.

What I mean by the news here isn’t the typical news such as those that are published by news media houses instead it’s only information that talks about the activities that surround the company, its products, services, and other business-related information.

Newsletter communication has gone beyond communicating the events that surround a business to its customers instead it’s now a communication employed as a business-to-consumer marketing communication tool.

At this present age, a newsletter is a marketing tool that is used by businesses to communicate with customers with the aim of improving their relationships with customers and also motivating them to commit to different sales and purchase activities.

Firstly, knowing that a newsletter is a marketing tool is the first step to writing the perfect content that gets read by your ideal audience.

Understanding that it’s a marketing strategy makes you prepare your mind that everything you write is to sell an idea, to make your audience buy your idea; in doing this you entertain and educate them with the content you serve them.

The Practical Step by Step Guide to Writing the Perfect Newsletter that Gets Open & Read

As it is to everything in life, to succeed at any venture it’s important to know why you start even before you start. You don’t jump on the road traveling without having a destination on your mind.

To make the processes of creating your newsletter easy, you need to identify what your goal is with the content before heading to pen a word down. What do you plan to achieve with the newsletter, what would you love the newsletter to do for you.

Set a Definite Goal

Understanding and clearly stating the goal you plan to achieve with it gives you an overview template of what you need to write. It helps you generate the relevant idea you need to write about.

By setting a clear goal you are able to orderly align the thoughts in your mind that you want to write about or match the ideas you’ve researched.

To set a goal or know what your goal should be, asking yourself questions such as; what would I want my reader do after reading this content, how would I want my readers to feel after reading this content, would help you arrive at what the best goal for your newsletter is.

Generally, the common goals why many businesses write and serve their customers, newsletters are to;

1. Drive sales

2. Drive traffic to a webpage

3. Promote new products/services

4. Download an ebook

5. Motivate prospect to sign-up for an upcoming event

6. Promote social media engagement, etc.

To achieve any of the goals mentioned above, you need to determine the kind of emotions you want to evoke in the readers.

Do you want your readers smiling while consuming the content, do you want them to feel remorseful for committing an action they ought not to have committed or for not having done something they ought to have done in the past, do you want them to feel hopeful that there’s still a chance to write a wrong, do you want them feeling excited about why they must sign-up for your program.

Whatever the emotional objective is, to be really successful with newsletter marketing you need to influence your audience to commit to the goal you want and to do this you have to tap into their deepest emotional desires or fears to push them into action.

Whatever your goals are, you don’t want to overwhelm your audience with promotional content all of the time.

People don’t sit and spend their time before the television just to watch advertisements, no matter how interesting the ad script is, you don’t just glue yourself to the TV for ads’ sake. So also it is with newsletters, your audience didn’t subscribe because they want to get sold to every time.

While making your promotion, ensure you educate them, give them something to hold onto so they can tell themselves how they’ve benefited from reading your content.

As soon as you determine the goals you want to achieve which are the business and the emotional objectives, the next step you want to proceed into is putting down your thought.

Writing your thought down is the point you need every other practical principle to work with. So what are these principles that you must observe when writing your newsletter?

Personalization

When you write your content, be mindful to convey your message in a humanly relatable manner. Communicate with your audience in a personalized tone such that the reader gets the feeling of a personal connection with you.

Even though the primary aim is to promote your product, or make them buy your desire, you don’t want to appear like the annoying automation that many companies use to communicate with their customers.

Every human thrives in emotional connection, so you should tap into that gap and fill it up by creating likable content that educates and entertains your audience.

One way to personalize your content is to mention their names once or twice within the content. For example, instead of starting your newsletter with “hi there or hey you” you should start with their names, say “hi John or hey Nicole”. Personalizing your content this way makes the readers feel you know, and care about not just their money but about them truly.

Another way to personalize your content is by addressing your audience with the word “you” rather than using an unspecific pronoun that places them among the crowd or generalized them with others, every human loves to feel unique.

These principles will be totally incomplete and ineffective if you fail to input some form of persuasion, fun, and humor in your writing. Write like you’re telling someone a story or you’re sending a story to someone.

Doing this makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas in a less corporate tone. Even though you work in the corporate industry, you shouldn’t sound too professional; your readers are already getting drowned by the sea of jargons they meet daily in the course of work.

Infuse some elements of fun and let readers feel entertained and relaxed while consuming the content you serve them. Now that you know you need to personalize your content to create effective newsletter content. What next should you watch out for?

Headline

The most important element of successful content is the headline. Your content doesn’t have to be great to be successful, what makes content successful is the validation it gets from the viewers, the number of viewership it gains, and engagement.

How fast and strong you are able to pull your readers’ attention determines how successful your content becomes. The numbers of views you record on your content rely mostly on how you are able to attract a reader’s mind. To write a great headline that people easily connect with always ensures your headline states the benefit the readers will get by reading the content.

It shouldn’t surprise you that we are very selfish beings as humans; we always look for what’s in it for us. We oftentimes give because we know we are likely to receive in return. To earn your audience’s attention let them know you have something worthwhile in your content that they can trade their attention and time for.

As you try to create great headlines ensure you don’t develop headlines that offer unimaginable promises or appear unbelievable. Keep it simple, sincere, and short.

Subject line

The next thing you want to do after creating a headline is to craft the perfect introduction that can get your readers to want to continue reading your content. The first few sentences of your content determine how many people will read your content.

The function of the subject line is to give the readers a sneak peek of what they are to meet in the rest of the content.

It’s like the movies advert we see on Television where the advertiser gives us a glimpse of the movie line and leave us anticipating what happens next, and because as human are wants are insatiable we feel a high nudge to satisfy our curiosity by all cost, we end up marking the movie release date, and be among the first few set of persons to sit in the cinema to see it.

So how do you write this powerful subject line that can hook any reader and sink them deeper into your content? Start the introduction or the subject line of your content with a common question that reflects their pain or desire.

Begin with a thought, you know they are aware of and would willingly nod their heads in agreement after reading it.

An example is an introduction I used in this article; let’s quickly get back to the first paragraphs of this piece, “How, if at all, would learning how to write great newsletter content improve your personal marketing skills and business marketing strategy? What benefit would creating the perfect newsletter content have on your business?

Have you ever truly thought about the impacts the perfect newsletters can do on your business. Can you imagine the huge economic transformation you stand to get by just deploying the right newsletter to the right audience at the right time?”

Check the sentences again and watch carefully how it expressed your desires which are to learn how to write a great newsletter, it didn’t just tell you how you are going to learn to write a newsletter instead it made you pause and imagine what learning how to write a newsletter would do for you, it made you imagine the benefits you stand to get by learning how to write great content for your email subscriber.

This exactly is how you should come up with your subject line. Ensure the introduction evokes a feeling such that the reader takes a quick journey down into his imagination and fantasizes about the things he would benefit from by reading your content. In fact, these types of subject lines make readers feel guilty if they fail to consume your content.

Instruct your Audience with your Content

The end goal of the content is to make the readers commit an action. It makes no business sense if you write just to educate or entertain your audience without requesting anything in return.

You’re not a comedian; even comedians get paid for telling jokes to entertain their audience. So every piece you write must contain a set of ethical and respectful requests.

This request is the call to action, it is the first reason you started writing the piece at the beginning.

Whatever the reason is that you started writing the piece ensure you clearly state it to them.

If the action you want your readers to perform is to follow you on socials, clearly state it somewhere in the content and it preferably should be towards the end of the content.

If the action you need them to take is clicking a link to sign up, to download, to like a post, whatever it is, be clear they understand the instruction you are giving and never assume they know what to do or they are knowledgeable enough to figure out what to do.

Another important aspect you want to watch out for is, ensure you are not making too many requests at a time, and keep just only one or two requests at a time. By doing this you are able to maintain a maximum conversion and avoid splitting the result you get.

Asking them to click on several links may divert their attention away since they have too many options calling their attention.

Maintain Brevity and a Uniquely Consistent Voice

It’s a newsletter and not a blog post. Everything you write should be aimed at telling your story within the shortest time. Write like you want to tell a busy manager who has granted you just a few minutes of his time, an interesting story.

Make your story short, simple, and relatable. Remember those who are reading your mail don’t have all the time in the world to stick and smile at your story all day.

No matter how interesting the content of your newsletter is, once it gets too long, it wears readers out.

So ensure to be concise and descriptive. While keeping your content short another thing should maintain is to keep a unique voice in your writing. Create a dedicated writing style that your fans can distinguish anytime, any day, and anywhere.

Finally, follow a consistent content delivery time, let your readers know when to expect your newsletter. Make them know how many days of the week you will be dropping a mail in their inbox. By doing this you make them anticipate hearing from you and you are also able to stay at the top of their minds.

Let’s take a quick outro of this piece, a newsletter isn’t just a promotional report instead it’s a document that helps you to build a relationship with your audience and in the end pave way for making sales.

To create the perfect newsletter content that gets open and read you first need to have a goal to work with, personalize your content to make readers feel more connect with you and make you a likable expert they look to hear from.

From personalizing your content, you head to trading the readers’ attention for your content by creating an emotional headline that shows them in one second what they stand to gain by consuming your content, again you know why you must be brief, maintain a uniquely consistent voice.

If you found this content useful or learned anything new let me know in the comment box and do well to click the follow button to follow me and enjoy great content like this each time I publish something new.