CALL US We’ve talked about how to successfully build an email subscriber list and quite a bit about why email marketing should be at the top of your marketing spending because it’s one of the most cost effective ways to reach your customers and keep them coming back. But what about the newsletter itself? If you want people to engage you need to be sending something that is actually working for you and making your customers want to act.
First let’s do a little self-check. Which one of these are you more likely to want to engage with?
Option A
Option B
Option B grabs your attention and draws you in; Option A is just another email with text and nothing to make you want to engage. Creating a reusable template like Option B is a great idea and very cost effective because you can reuse it each time and just replace the content and images. Talk to your web development team about doing this for you.
6 Tips to Improve Newsletter Conversion
- Make sure the sender is familiar – If people sign up for the Faces+ newsletter example above, they expect to get a newsletter from Faces+ Plastic Surgery and not Jane Smith who works at Faces+. Make sure you are sending from the familiar name people will know, not from a person within your company. If they signed up for XYZ Company then the emails should be from XYZ Company.
- Chunk out your newsletter – People don’t read left to right like a book when reading email – they skim for items of interest. Text heavy emails are hard to read and people will skip over much of the content. Think about the emails you get now from people. The long ones you skip over. The short ones you read right away. Breaking up your newsletter into chunks of information will help people digest it better and increase your chances of engagement.
- Segment whenever possible – Most businesses are able to segment customers into smaller groups. If you are an eye doctor, you may have older patients interested cataracts, bifocals and glaucoma, with a younger set focused on trendy eyewear and sunglasses. Send your customers relevant content they care about.
- Use images to sell your story – While some people like to read, most don’t. We are a visual society and images are your friend, but don’t overdo it. Every piece of chunked out content should have an image to sell the story.
- Sell the benefit in your content – If you are trying to drive a click through from your newsletter to your website or something else, you need to sell it. Tell your subscriber what benefit they can expect from clicking and the heading and body content you add for this will sell it.
- Include calls to action – Every piece of content needs to have a call to action. Whether it’s an event you want people to RSVP to, a new product you are introducing, or some special, you need to have a call to action to entice people to click through. RSVP Here. Buy Now. Schedule a Consult. Show people how to respond and make it easy.
Email newsletters can be so powerful for your business if you do it right. With a little planning and practice they can become one of the most efficient ways to reach out to your customers.
