Have you given-up on your newsletter? Or, if not, your results and income from email marketing are less than inspiring?
And for many, the multitude of daily tasks and priorities often shove their newsletters to the bottom of the list. Here are a few points worth remembering.
#1 – According to the venerable Direct Marketing Association, email marketing (newsletters) still provides the best ROI.
#2 – Jakob Nielson, established industry expert in usability, offers this: “Newsletters must be seen as a long-term investment: They work their magic over time.”
Bonus point #3 – As I’ve said before, and statistics show, the majority of people will be reading your newsletter with their mobile phones. Make adjustments in your email content for brevity while providing links to more content.
With that said, here are tips to keep your newsletter relevant and effective. The biggest tip of all is to build relationships (through trust) and avoid going for the quick sale.
Tip #1 – You should have some feel for commonly asked customer questions. Do you have a list of pet peeves about all the things you wished your customers knew? Or maybe there are other points that frequently crop-up?
Use all that information and make a list of newsletter topics.
Tip #2 – Authority and credible, believable expertise is extremely important as so much follows when your audience feels you’re an expert. And as you know, this is a formidable hurdle when you’re just starting out.
Demonstrate your expertise. Show them rather than tell them.
Of course how-to content is still highly effective and should be used. People love reading opinion pieces because they offer knowledge and insights into important issues. But here’s another reason to write opinion-based content.
You can let your unique personality shine with opinion web content. And that is exactly how you distinguish yourself from everyone else in your niche. What else?
People want to stay on top of what’s new, hot, and happening. You hate being bored and so does your audience. Stay current and monitor what’s trending in your niche and then apply your expertise to write about it.
Tip #3 – Establish a goal for each newsletter issue. And making sales should not be a goal for each issue if you have a strategic, long-term vision. Why has a goal in this context?
Goals force us to find ways to achieve them. That process leads to coherent, logical plans for your emails. Your readers will spend about less than a minute scanning your emails. (That is if they open it.)
So you must be concise, organized and to-the-point to avoid any confusion about what’s being talked about and what you want them to do.
Bonus Tip – Look around for inspiration if you need it. The web and social media in particular are loaded with it. You just have to find it.
You can get inspiration from links on Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook – or other social platforms. Granted, many (or most) conversations are not so relevant or informative. But some of them are and they can lead to genuine interest and important lessons learned.
All you need to do is work the information in such a way that makes it your own. And it has to be relevant to your audience.
You can take your email marketing to higher levels by learning from an expert.
