The newsletter is a staple of email marketing, and when properly used it can be a valuable tool for converting sales, improving customer loyalty and building your brand. If you want to take your email marketing to the next level and improve your sales, creating a compelling newsletter is one of the best ways to do it. But before you start typing, you need to understand how all the parts of the newsletter come together and how they influence the behavior of the reader.
Every great newsletter has a few things in common. Let’s look at the anatomy of the perfect newsletter and the importance of each element.
The Subject Line
Your readers will want to know what the current newsletter is about and how it can help them solve a problem or learn more about a specific subject. Be sure the subject line is clear, concise and easy to read.
Get right to the point when designing your newsletter and writing your text. It is important that the newsletter come in at no more than 70-80Kb in size – any larger and many email providers may not be able to deliver it.
Your Brand and Logo
Every newsletter you send is another chance to build your brand and improve the reputation of your company. Your company logo should be prominently displayed in your newsletter, and your brand should be easily visible.
The Call to Action
While your readers certainly enjoy your newsletters, the real purpose behind the document is to get that reader to do something. Whether that something is signing up for your email list, visiting your website, liking your Facebook page or coming to your grand opening, all that should be clearly spelled out in your newsletter’s call to action.
No matter what the call to action, it should stand out from the surrounding newsletter text. The reader’s eye should automatically be drawn to the call to action, even on a quick perusal. Whether you incorporate a “Subscribe Now” button or a “Learn More” link in your newsletter, the call to action should be highly visible and user friendly.
When you do include your logo, make sure it is consistent in look and feel. Every piece of communication you send, from marketing emails and newsletters to product brochures and templates, should contain the same logo and brand identification. From the font to the color, consistency is the key.
The Content
The content of your newsletter is critical to its success, as is its layout. Readers are used to reading newspapers in columns, so breaking your newsletter content into columns is a smart move. You can dedicate a column to each subject you want to cover in your newsletter – this will make it easier for the reader and provide a better visual image.
The Footer
The bottom of the newsletter is often overlooked, but a good footer will give the document a more professional look and feel. The newsletter footer should contain details about your company – things like the physical address, phone number, email addresses – along with the unsubscribe link.
If you have excellent knowledge of HTML coding and good design skills you can design your newsletter from scratch. On the contrary, if you do not know anything about coding it is much better that you use a newsletter creator, like MailStyler. With newsletter creator you can design your own newsletter template with a few simple drag&drop moves, without writing a single line of code. The final template will look perfect on all email clients and webmails.
No matter what the nature of your business, a good newsletter is a powerful marketing tool. Understanding the anatomy of this critical document and how all the elements come together will help you improve not only your newsletter but your entire marketing process.
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