Email newsletter tricks and tips

A regular email newsletter is an excellent way of keeping in touch with prospects, clients, suppliers and other stakeholders in your business. Distributing an email newsletter to people who've opted to receive email communication allows you to develop ongoing relationships that build the trust, awareness and loyalty crucial to branding and sales.

But don't push the friendship. In an age of too much communication, we've become brutal in our filtering of what we will and won't read online. So it's vital to treat those in your opt-in database with the utmost respect. The simplest way to do this is to give them what they assigned-up for - relevant, timely and engaging content that's on-topic.

Your subscribers want to hear from you, and they're clearly interested in your business, but it's folly to attempt to sell with every communication (unless you're in retail, perhaps). Instead, your goal should be to establish your email newsletter as a reliable and interesting source of information that offers your readers something valuable.

An email newsletter from a service-oriented organisation, for instance, should focus on industry trends, news and analysis. In establishing your email newsletter as the 'GO TO' source for information on your industry, you subconsciously place your brand at the front of people's minds when they consider purchasing whatever it is you sell.

A great example of this is Slattery's Watch, an information technology public relations firm whose email newsletter has a subscriber base of over 5000. Every fortnight their strikingly designed, professionally formatted email newsletter features a mix of company and industry news. For those looking to get a snapshot of the IT industry in Australia, this newsletter is a fantastic resource. For those readers looking for marketing and event management services in the IT space, Slattery's Watch is top of mind. That's a huge market advantage - all because they shared their knowledge.

The mechanics of crafting a good email newsletter - micro-content

Email has lost its innocence. No longer do we ponder over every message that hits our inbox. We've become a culture of skimmers. So the trick to catching people's attention is to write your email newsletter with micro-content in mind. Craft your email newsletter to sum-up your message in subject lines, FROM addresses, opening lines and catchy headings. Break your text up with sub-headings. Write smart. Write for the skimmer.

But it's not only structure that'll increase the chances of your email newsletter getting read. Strategy is also important.

Segment Your Email Newsletter

There's a simple obstacle that prevents any email newsletter achieving results - the delete key. So focusing on strategies for increasing your open rates is crucial to getting the most out of your email newsletter.

One technique for improving your open rates and readership is "segmentation". Don't just send the same email newsletter to your entire database. Instead, create more personalised messages for segments of your list. VIP clients, return customers, prospects, suppliers and partners may each warrant a newsletter specifically tailored to them. You might only change one paragraph in each niche newsletter, but that paragraph may be the difference between engaging your reader and getting relegated to the trash folder.

How to create an email newsletter

A range of free and low-cost software programs exist to make creating, managing, monitoring and archiving email newsletters easy. These programs ensure consistent, quality design. The higher-end programs make it easy for you to track your email newsletter to see who opened it, where they sent it, and other valuable statistical data that'll help you refine and improve your email newsletter communication.

Microsoft Word also gives you all the tools you need to quickly create an email newsletter and to send it to your subscribers with a few simple keystrokes.

Whatever program you use to create your email newsletter, however you decide to segment it, and whatever you opt to include in it, you'll no doubt be pleasantly surprised by the interest an email newsletter will generate. You'll have return correspondence coming from places and people you'd never have considered as your market, all by providing great information to your subscribers.