Building your brand is an important part of any entrepreneur’s success. An email newsletter is a good tool to use. Here are some best practices your small business should follow.
Email Newsletter Best Practices
Tell Subscribers What They’ll Get
Be sure everyone knows what to expect as soon as they sign up. Tell them the type of content they’ll get and when they should expect to see your newsletter in their inbox. This kind of transparency sets a good tone and helps to build a good relationship right away.
Design It for Mobile
It’s important to keep in mind how important mobile is to getting your newsletter in front of your target market. Reading on a smaller screen is different than the desktop, and you need to make the changes to optimize your newsletter for smart phones.
Buttons need to be nice and large so they are easy to click and the content needs to be short and sweet. People are reading from their smart phones on the go and you need to keep that in mind.
Create Subject Lines That Sizzle
People will be expecting your email newsletter if they’ve signed up, but you can drive up the open rates by creating excellent subject lines. Letting them know they’ll be getting 10 useful tips on a relevant subject is a good start.
Short and simple is also the way to go here.
Add Interesting Content
If you’ve got anywhere with your business, you already know what interests your target market. You need to capitalize on that and include interesting content in your newsletter that doesn’t include a lot of hard sell ad copy.
Emphasizing the educational content versus the sales copy means implementing a 90%/10% split.
Add That Personal Touch
The chances are the people you are sending your newsletter to delete more emails than they open. Adding a first name at the beginning of your newsletter can make a big difference to bumping up your open rates. You should be collecting these when people sign up for your newsletter at first.
Offer Something Special
It’s no secret that you need to be on top of your business game to have people open your newsletter and read it. Special offers are one of the biggest draws to boost your open rates. These can be coupons or even discounts that are only available to your email subscribers.
Here’s another helpful tip. The special offers that you include carry more power if you only include them with a subscription to your email newsletter.
Be Consistent
Everyone likes routines and that includes the subscribers to your email newsletter. That’s why it’s important to make sure that you send it out on the same day at roughly the same time so people who are waiting for it won’t be disappointed.
Optimize and Test Your Newsletter
Finding out what works best for your target market is all about tracking and testing some different options. This is an excellent way to test things like your headers and subject lines.
It can also tell you how you might need to adjust your call to action if that’s what you focus on.
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This article, “Best 8 Tips for Email Newsletter Best Practices” was first published on Small Business Trends