Hey there, it’s Matt from Style Factory - the go-to site for tips on how to build
a digital business.
In this post I’m going to show you how to create an email newsletter.
But before I get started, here’s my usual reminder to like this video, subscribe to
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easy access to all our tips going forward.
Right, let’s get going.
One — Organize your data.
Before you think about ‘how’ you are going to send an email newsletter, you need to think
about the ‘who’ – the individuals that you’d like to communicate with.
In order to send the most relevant e-newsletters that generate the most revenue, you need as
good an email marketing database as possible.
Now, a lot of businesses have their contacts’ email addresses tucked away in a messy spreadsheet
somewhere – or more likely, spread across several very messy spreadsheets!
Or, it might even be the case that a lot of email addresses have been captured in physical
format — for example, in application forms, customer files and other types of paperwork.
Regardless of where your email addresses live, it’s a good idea to digitize and consolidate
all of them into one clean, well-organized database before you try to send any newsletters
to the contacts on them.
Tools like Excel and Google Sheets make it easy to do this — just create a new spreadsheet
using either tool, and enter your email addresses into it.
While doing this, ensure that you segment your contacts as well as you can.
This means putting a column in your spreadsheet that you use to categorize people as leads,
current customers, past customers and so on.
Doing this will give you the ability to send more targeted email newsletters in future.
When you’ve finished this preparation, you should have a spreadsheet that contains all
your cleaned, segmented data in one place.
This is your mailing list, which can now be uploaded to an email marketing app.
Two — get an email marketing app.
Many small business owners think that sending e-newsletters means compiling a list of email
addresses, copying and pasting them into the BCC field of a normal email message, and hitting
the send button.
This is a very time-consuming way to go about things — and it’s also ineffective, because
it doesn’t allow you to send professional-looking email newsletters, prevents you accessing
newsletter analytics and increases the likelihood that your newsletters will trigger spam filters.
Accordingly, it is a much better idea to use a dedicated email marketing app for sending
your e-newsletter — one that lets you send ‘HTML newsletters.’
HTML newsletters, as their name suggests, use HTML code to display text and graphics.
This means that the resulting newsletters are attractive and on-brand.
It’s important to note however that email marketing apps don’t require you to know
anything about HTML code to use them — you simply use their drag and drop tools to design
your newsletter, and all the necessary HTML is automatically created in the background
for you.
Now, there are many web-based solutions that you can use to send HTML newsletters.
Popular options include GetResponse, AWeber, Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor.
And many email marketing apps can actually be used entirely for free — if you check
the video description, you’ll find links to these free plans.
Three — choose a template.
Once you’ve decided on which email marketing app you’re going to use, you need to sort
out how your email newsletters are going to look.
Helpfully, email apps typically provide a wide range of professionally-designed templates
that you can use as the starting point for your newsletter design.
Once you’ve picked a template, you can then tweak its design elements using a drag and
drop editor.
You can then save and reuse this as your own template for your future newsletters.
Four — add your content.
Once you’ve picked a newsletter template, it’s time to add your content.
Generally speaking, it’s best to focus on one call to action here, rather than populating
your newsletter with lots of competing offers.
Decide on the most important thing to communicate, and do so clearly using simple language and
attractive images.
Five — test your newsletter carefully.
At this point you should have a newsletter template sorted and a nicely crafted message.
However, before you hit the send button, you need to run a couple of tests on your newsletter.
First, you need to make sure that it will arrive safely in inboxes and not in a spam
folder.
Professional email marketing solutions always let you send test versions of your newsletters,
so use this functionality to send a test message to a few different types of email apps – for
example, Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo Mail.
Check each app to ensure that your message is not being flagged as spam.
You’ll also need to check that your email newsletter is displaying correctly in all
contexts.
Sometimes an email that looks great in Outlook can look terrible in Gmail, or the desktop
version of a message can look fantastic, while the mobile version is all messed up.
So, always check that your message is displaying nicely across a wide range of devices and
email programs before sending it out.
Six — hit the send button (and measure success!)
Once you’re happy that your newsletter is displaying nicely across a variety of email
apps and device types, you can send your message.
But even when your message is sent, there’s still a bit of work to do: you need to measure
the success of your newsletter.
Most e-newsletter tools come with comprehensive reporting functionality – after sending
an e-newsletter, you should be able to access statistics that let you measure their performance.
The key things you’ll need to look at are open rates, clickthrough rates and unsubscribe
rates.
You can use these statistics to help you create better newsletter content and subject lines
that generate more conversions in future.
And that’s it!
I hope you’ve found our guide on how to create an email newsletter helpful.
However, there’s lots more to learn about how to send great e-newsletters, so do make
sure you check out the full Style Factory guide to creating newsletters.
You’ll find a link to this in the video description, along with some free email marketing
apps.
For more tips on digital marketing, make sure you subscribe to our channel and hit the notifications
bell.
And if you have any questions about email newsletters, just leave them in the comments
section.
We read all queries and will do our best to help.