After formulating an email marketing strategy, consider creating a newsletter. Starting a newsletter can enhance brand loyalty, grow your email subscriber lists, and help you better understand your customers.
A newsletter requires strategy and defined goals. Your strategy includes knowing how often to send your newsletter, what content to include, and why your audience connects with your brand. Newsletters serve a different purpose from other types of emails by being a place to communicate directly and personally. For example, you might use a newsletter to share stories about the people behind a business or brand.
Read on to learn more about defining your newsletter goals and how to start an email newsletter.
Defining your newsletter goals
Every individual or business has different reasons for starting a newsletter. Before launching any campaigns, identify your goals and outline what you hope to accomplish.
It's normal if these goals are general at first. Answering the following questions can help focus your thinking so that you can devise a successful strategy.
Why do you want to start a newsletter? Before you consider how to make a newsletter, think about why you've decided to launch one. Is your email marketing strategy not giving you the expected results? Do you want to establish yourself as a thought leader? Do you want to drive website traffic, expand your audience, or grow your mailing list?
What information will your newsletter contain? As with promotional emails, newsletters communicate a broad range of thoughtfully tailored information. Are you looking to send a newsletter only when you have big news to share? If your newsletter promotes a blog, will you share excerpts from your posts or offer a link round-up?
What does a successful newsletter look like to you? Determining your definition of success for your newsletter provides a framework for future newsletter strategies. Goals can include increased website traffic, social media shares, or content engagement.
Do you have the bandwidth to launch a newsletter? Starting, maintaining, and marketing a newsletter requires a consistent time commitment. If you're in a busy period or in the middle of growing other aspects of your business, you might want to delay a newsletter launch until you have more time.
Is your audience interested in a newsletter? Analyze your existing customers to see if they are likely to engage with your newsletter. If your subscriber list is small or you have little engagement, you might first focus on improving those metrics before launching a newsletter.
Your email newsletter to-do list
Once you've decided to start a newsletter, there's a checklist of to-dos to go through before you send the first email.
Determine your mix of content. Newsletters succeed on the strength of their content. Consider creating a newsletter that covers aspects of your business you're not sharing elsewhere. This could be behind-the-scenes insights into a product launch, employee spotlights, or exclusive articles. Newsletters are an opportunity for more informal writing, including business advice or personal anecdotes about your life as a creator, business owner, or blogger.
Define a newsletter tone. Think about the newsletters that you like and consistently read or that stand out to you as being effective from a marketing perspective. Consider how you could emulate those you admire, but in ways that feel natural for your own brand. If your business has a well-defined brand, evaluate how a newsletter fits with your existing context mix and brand voice and messaging.
Plan your newsletter cadence. How frequently you plan to send your newsletter depends on customer preference and business need. For example, if you already communicate with your audience on a weekly basis about sales or services, you may opt for a monthly newsletter cadence. Decide what makes sense for you and your schedule. When will you have time to write a newsletter, and how much time can you invest in each volume? When will your business have enough content to share on a consistent schedule?
Starting an email newsletter
Once you've decided to launch a newsletter for your business or blog and have determined a content framework, it's time to lay the groundwork for getting started.
Subscribe to an email marketing platform with newsletter tools.
Design a newsletter template.
Develop a subscriber growth strategy.
Look at your website design, and consider adding newsletter blocks to capture sign-ups.
Most email marketing platforms offer free or low-cost trials, so new customers can test out their products before making a commitment. Squarespace Email Campaigns offers three free email marketing campaigns to annual subscribers on any of our four paid plans, in order to accommodate different business budgets.