What are email newsletters?

The email newslet­ter is one of the most com­mon forms of B2B and B2C com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. In sim­ple terms, a brand’s newslet­ter is sent via email to sub­scribers who have opt­ed in to receive updates, pro­mo­tions, or oth­er com­pa­ny content.

Email newslet­ters typ­i­cal­ly con­tain infor­ma­tion about new prod­ucts, spe­cial offers, indus­try news, and oth­er rel­e­vant content.

Why do brands need to send a newsletter?

Though every­one seems to be rav­ing about social media at the moment, email is still alive and well. A newslet­ter is a bril­liant way to stay in con­tact with cus­tomers, nur­ture poten­tial leads, and encour­age brand engagement.

By keep­ing cus­tomers informed about new prod­ucts, pro­mo­tions, and updates, busi­ness­es can increase cus­tomer reten­tion and brand loy­al­ty. Plus, con­sis­tent­ly send­ing con­tent that’s well-designed and engag­ing can help busi­ness­es rein­force their val­ues with cus­tomers, strength­en­ing their brand identity.

Newslet­ters also help dri­ve traf­fic to e‑commerce sites through links to prod­ucts, blog posts, and spe­cial offers. By encour­ag­ing sub­scribers to click through and vis­it the web­site, busi­ness­es can see increased engage­ment, sales, and improved SEO performance.

All of these ben­e­fits can be obtained at a rel­a­tive­ly low cost, con­sid­er­ing how expen­sive oth­er dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels can be. Email newslet­ters require min­i­mal invest­ment in terms of design and pro­duc­tion, mak­ing them an ide­al chan­nel for low-bud­get campaigns.

So, to sum­marise, the main ben­e­fits of email newslet­ters include the following:

• Devel­op­ing a loy­al cus­tomer base
• Strength­en­ing brand identity
• Dri­ving traf­fic towards your website
• Boost­ing SEO
• … and it’s cheap­er than alter­na­tive meth­ods of marketing!

How can brands create a newsletter?

So, how do email newslet­ters actu­al­ly work?

If you want to get involved and cre­ate an email newslet­ter from scratch, here’s what you can expect to encounter:

1. Establish your mailing list

Your first order of busi­ness needs to be col­lect­ing a list of sub­scribers to who you can send your newslet­ter. Legal­ly, these sub­scribers need to “opt in.” To obtain sub­scribers, you need to cre­ate a sign-up form on your web­site, social media pages, or through oth­er mar­ket­ing channels.

To learn how you can opti­mise your opt-in forms, read our arti­cle here.

2. Choose a platform

Email mar­ket­ing cam­paigns are com­mon­ly sup­port­ed by and oper­at­ed through the use of tools such as Mailchimp, Hub­Spot, or Klaviyo. There are count­less tools to choose from, all offer­ing dif­fer­ent fea­tures that cater to var­i­ous busi­ness needs.

To read our take on the top 5 email mar­ket­ing tools, check out our arti­cle here. You’ll need to con­sid­er your options seri­ous­ly if you’re to select the best one for your unique business.

3. Create content

Once you’ve estab­lished how you’re going to send emails and who you’re going to send them to, you need to have some­thing to send.

The list of dif­fer­ent types of con­tent you could put in an email newslet­ter is end­less. Choose from link­ing to blog posts, YouTube videos, prod­uct pages, com­pa­ny updates, and pro­mot­ing spe­cial offers, new prod­uct ranges, and indus­try news.

What­ev­er the con­tent, it should be rel­e­vant, engag­ing, and infor­ma­tive for subscribers.

4. Design your newsletter

Once your con­tent is ready, it’s time to design the look of your newslet­ters. You can do this on a web­site such as Can­va or design with­in your cho­sen email mar­ket­ing plat­form. Most plat­forms offer email newslet­ter tem­plates, which are great for beginners.

Make sure you cus­tomise your design to match your com­pa­ny’s brand­ing and use UX tech­niques to opti­mise your emails for click-through rate (CTR) and engagement.

5. Figure out your schedule

After design­ing your newslet­ter, it’s time to cre­ate a cal­en­dar or sched­ule. Typ­i­cal­ly, email newslet­ters become part of a pre-exist­ing con­tent cal­en­dar, coor­di­nat­ing to boost the oth­er. I.e., pro­mot­ing your week­ly blog posts.

Over time, your email ana­lyt­ics will inform you of the best time to send emails through A/B test­ing or infor­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion. But for now, it’s time to get your newslet­ter out there!

6. Analyse and adjust

Once you’ve start­ed send­ing out newslet­ters, you can begin to track email per­for­mance, a fea­ture typ­i­cal­ly offered by the email mar­ket­ing tools men­tioned above. You’ll need to pay atten­tion to met­rics such as open rate, click-through rate, unsub­scribe rate, etc.

Learn more about email mar­ket­ing KPIs by check­ing out our arti­cle here.

The insights gained from per­for­mance ana­lyt­ics will help your newslet­ters improve over time as you spot issues and opti­mise cer­tain elements.

20 best practices for email newsletters

Now that you know what’s involved in cre­at­ing an email newslet­ter, it’s time to delve deep­er into that process and learn the best prac­tices. First­ly, it’s impor­tant to know what can go wrong.

Here are the main ways in which newslet­ter cam­paigns fail:

• Lack of strat­e­gy or planning
• Unclear tar­gets and goals
• Poor qual­i­ty or irrel­e­vant content
• Inef­fec­tive sub­ject lines
• Send­ing too many emails or spamming
• Incon­sis­tent or unclear branding
• Lack of per­son­al­i­sa­tion to sub­scribers or segments
• Tech­ni­cal setbacks

Know­ing these com­mon set­backs will help you pre­pare to avoid them, but what can you do to ensure success?

Here are 20 best prac­tices and tips that busi­ness­es should keep in mind for newslet­ter success:

1. Begin with clear objectives

Before start­ing a newslet­ter cam­paign, busi­ness­es should define clear goals and objec­tives that align with their over­all mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. This will help them design newslet­ters that are rel­e­vant to their tar­get audi­ence and cre­at­ed with a pre­cise vision in mind.

2. Understand your audience

Busi­ness­es should have a clear under­stand­ing of their tar­get audi­ence’s pref­er­ences, inter­ests, and behav­iours. This will help them cre­ate per­son­alised con­tent that res­onates with their sub­scribers. More­over, under­stand­ing an audi­ence can help opti­mise email sched­ul­ing and the type of con­tent that is shared.

3. Keep things simple and clear

Newslet­ter con­tent should be easy to read and under­stand, as well as struc­tured clear­ly. Busi­ness­es should use sim­ple lan­guage, short para­graphs, and bul­let points to make the con­tent more digestible, as well as avoid­ing an over­whelm­ing use of colour.

4. Consistency is key

Newslet­ters should be sent on a con­sis­tent sched­ule, whether that’s week­ly, month­ly, or quar­ter­ly. This will help sub­scribers antic­i­pate and look for­ward to the next newslet­ter. Plus, it can help busi­ness­es from com­ing across as spammy.

5. Use eye-catching visuals

Eye-catch­ing visu­als such as images, info­graph­ics, and videos can help grab the atten­tion of sub­scribers and make the newslet­ter more engag­ing. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in the cur­rent cli­mate, where indi­vid­u­als are receiv­ing about 100 emails per day.

6. Make it mobile-friendly

With the major­i­ty of emails now being read on mobile devices, newslet­ters should be designed to be mobile-friend­ly. This means using a respon­sive design that adapts to dif­fer­ent screen sizes.

7. Personalise your messages

Per­son­al­i­sa­tion can sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase engage­ment and make sub­scribers feel more con­nect­ed to busi­ness­es. Brands can per­son­alise newslet­ter con­tent by using the sub­scriber’s name, loca­tion, or past pur­chase his­to­ry to inform what’s sent to them.

To learn more about per­son­al­i­sa­tion in e‑commerce, check out our arti­cle here.

8. Continually test and optimise

To improve the effec­tive­ness of newslet­ters, busi­ness­es should test dif­fer­ent sub­ject lines, designs, and con­tent to see what works best for their audi­ence. They can then opti­mise their newslet­ters based on the results and see improved per­for­mance as their cam­paigns evolve over time.

9. Provide value – whatever form it takes

Newslet­ters should pro­vide val­ue to the sub­scriber, whether that’s through exclu­sive pro­mo­tions, use­ful con­tent, or indus­try insights. Even if sub­scribers aren’t com­pelled to buy any­thing in that moment, emails are a valid form of read­ing, and many peo­ple remain sub­scribed to mail­ing lists for the inter­est­ing con­tent they provide.

10. Optimise your calls-to-actions (CTAs)

Newslet­ters should include clear and com­pelling CTAs that encour­age sub­scribers to take action, such as vis­it­ing the web­site, mak­ing a pur­chase, or fol­low­ing the busi­ness on social media.

To learn how you can opti­mise your CTA but­tons, read our arti­cle here.

11. Make it easy to unsubscribe

Busi­ness­es should make it easy for sub­scribers to unsub­scribe from their newslet­ters rather than mak­ing it a frus­trat­ing or time-con­sum­ing process. This will help main­tain a pos­i­tive rela­tion­ship with sub­scribers, even if they decide to unsubscribe.

12. Use segmentation

Seg­men­ta­tion is the process of divid­ing sub­scribers into dif­fer­ent groups based on their inter­ests or behav­iours. By seg­ment­ing their audi­ence, busi­ness­es can cre­ate more tar­get­ed and rel­e­vant con­tent for each group.

13. Use a recognisable sender name

The sender’s name should be recog­nis­able and con­sis­tent across all newslet­ters. This helps build trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty with sub­scribers, which is essen­tial if you care about engage­ment and your ‘sender’s rep­u­ta­tion’.

14. Clean your mailing list

Hav­ing a ‘clean’ email list means reg­u­lar­ly clean­ing your mail­ing list by remov­ing inac­tive or invalid email address­es. I.e., peo­ple that are no longer inter­act­ing with your emails and haven’t done so in sev­er­al weeks or months.

Clean­ing your mail­ing list in this way can boost your sender rep­u­ta­tion, as your open and engage­ment rates will go right up. It might sound counter-intu­itive to remove sub­scribers, but unen­gaged users will actu­al­ly bring down your stats and dam­age your reputation.

15. Follow email marketing laws and regulations

Busi­ness­es should be aware of email mar­ket­ing laws and reg­u­la­tions in their region, such as GDPR or CAN-SPAM, to avoid legal issues and main­tain trust with subscribers.

16. Analyse and measure your results

Analysing the results of newslet­ter cam­paigns can help busi­ness­es under­stand what’s work­ing and what’s not. They can then adjust their strat­e­gy and con­tent accord­ing­ly to improve per­for­mance. This is absolute­ly essen­tial if you want your lead gen­er­a­tion and nur­tur­ing process­es to succeed.

17. Encourage social sharing

Includ­ing social shar­ing but­tons in emails can help increase the reach and vis­i­bil­i­ty of newslet­ter con­tent because sub­scribers are encour­aged to share it with their own net­works, refer­ring new leads to your site, blog, or social media channels.

18. Keep the email copy concise

The aver­age atten­tion span for a sin­gle email is 10–15 sec­onds. One way busi­ness­es can keep sub­scribers engaged is by keep­ing email copy short and to the point.

If you want to, you can pro­vide links to longer-form con­tent on your web­site or blog if you have some­thing you’d real­ly like to share.

19. Use a clear and compelling subject line

The sub­ject line of your emails should always be clear, con­cise, and descrip­tive. You want to give sub­scribers a pre­view of what’s inside your newslet­ter and stand out from the competition.

20. Use A/B testing

A/B test­ing can help busi­ness­es test dif­fer­ent ele­ments of their newslet­ter, such as sub­ject lines, calls-to-action, colour schemes, or even the time of day that the emails are sent.

Test­ing emails is cru­cial because we nev­er get it right the first time. Plus, busi­ness­es gath­er an increas­ing amount of data about their sub­scribers over time, which comes in handy when they want to see what works best with their audience.

Top 5 email newsletter best practices

OK, so maybe list­ing 20 best prac­tices is a lit­tle over­whelm­ing. There’s a lot you can focus on when cre­at­ing an email newslet­ter, but here are the top 5 most impor­tant things to remember:

1. Define clear goals at the begin­ning of your strat­e­gy, and always come back to them when mak­ing changes or analysing per­for­mance data.

2. Know your audi­ence, their pref­er­ences, and their behav­iour. This infor­ma­tion should be cen­tral to all your newslet­ter strat­e­gy decisions.

3. Keep every­thing sim­ple and clear – your design, con­tent, fre­quen­cy, and analysis.

4. Con­sis­ten­cy is key.

5. Always test your newslet­ters so you can con­tin­u­al­ly opti­mise them.

Should your business send a newsletter?

Is your busi­ness ready to cre­ate an email newslet­ter? If not, when is the right time?

While newslet­ters can be ben­e­fi­cial for many types of busi­ness­es, some may be bet­ter suit­ed to send­ing newslet­ters than oth­ers. Gen­er­al­ly, busi­ness­es that have a loy­al cus­tomer base, fre­quent pro­mo­tions, or new prod­ucts to announce, and a need to stay top-of-mind with their audi­ence are good con­tenders for send­ing out newsletters.

For exam­ple, the fol­low­ing busi­ness­es are well suit­ed to send­ing a newsletter:

• E‑commerce busi­ness­es can use newslet­ters to pro­mote their lat­est prod­ucts, spe­cial offers, help­ful tips, and prod­uct-relat­ed advice.
• Ser­vice-based busi­ness­es such as lawyers or accoun­tants can use newslet­ters to share indus­try news, com­pa­ny updates, ser­vice-relat­ed tips, and suc­cess stories.
• Non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tions can use newslet­ters to share updates on their mis­sion and impact, share vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties, and pro­mote fundrais­ing campaigns.
• B2B com­pa­nies use newslet­ters to share thought lead­er­ship con­tent, indus­try news, prod­uct or ser­vice updates, or to pro­mote events and webinars.
• Con­tent cre­ators such as blog­gers, pod­cast­ers, and influ­encers can use newslet­ters to share their lat­est con­tent with their sub­scribers, pro­mote upcom­ing events or projects, and engage with their audience.

On the oth­er hand, busi­ness­es with a small cus­tomer base may not need to cre­ate a newslet­ter if they can com­mu­ni­cate with their cus­tomers through oth­er chan­nels, such as social media or email.

Plus, if a busi­ness has infre­quent updates, such as a sea­son­al busi­ness or a busi­ness that launch­es new prod­ucts or ser­vices once or twice a year, it may not need to cre­ate one as there may not be enough con­tent to war­rant a reg­u­lar newsletter.

Fur­ther­more, busi­ness­es with lim­it­ed resources might find that oth­er mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties suit their needs bet­ter than an email newsletter.

That being said, any busi­ness can ben­e­fit from cre­at­ing a newslet­ter if they have a clear under­stand­ing of their audi­ence and can cre­ate rel­e­vant, engag­ing con­tent that pro­vides val­ue to their subscribers.

If you’re think­ing about cre­at­ing an email newslet­ter for your busi­ness but you’re not sure how to get it off the ground, we can help! Our team of experts here at pur­ple­plan­et will be glad to sup­port your new mar­ket­ing venture.

Learn more about our ser­vices by click­ing the but­ton below.

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