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How to make a newsletter: tips to sell 365 days a year
Do you include email marketing as part of your sales strategy?
If not, you can utilize newsletters to attract, sell, and gain loyalty right now on the Internet.
Sending emails to a database is a great way to communicate with your potential customers, build trust in your relationships and persuade them to buy your product or service.
In this post, I will explain how to make a newsletter in short, digestible tips that will help you start to build your subscriber list and sell 365 days a year.
These newsletter tips and examples will inspire you, so stay until the end 🙂
Let’s do it!
What is a newsletter?
A newsletter is an email you send to your subscriber database through an email marketing tool.
They can be informative emails, discounts and promotions, reminders of an event, or emails to sell your products or services.
Today we will focus on the latter, since an email marketing strategy is a powerful way to connect with your audience and convert them into customers.
The newsletter is a way of communication by businesses to existing or potential clients, via email.
You can create daily, weekly, or monthly newsletters. Newsletters can also be sent for specific occasions and without a predetermined frequency.
Throughout the post, I will explain how to make an effective newsletter with a sales objective, and give recommendations depending on the type of business you have.
Follow these 10 tips to create a strong newsletter and leave customers wanting more!
Tips to create a newsletter
✅ Tip 1 – Define your goals, value proposition, and buyer persona.
The first thing you should be very clear about is what objective you are pursuing with your newsletter.
Why do you want to send emails through a database?
It can be selling X products or services, get more traffic to your social networks, affiliation to sell third-party products…
Everything will depend on your business model.
You should consider the SMART criteria to define your goals:
S – Specific – specific
M – Measurable – measurable
A – Achievable – achievable
R – Relevant – relevant
T – Timely – temporary
In addition to the objectives, you should have a deep understanding of the product you sell.
Believe it or not, many businesses don’t really know what they are selling. They have not defined their value proposition well and don’t know what differentiates them from the competition.
You have to know what makes you stand out from others brands, and who your ideal customer is.
Identify your buyer persona, their needs, problems, desires, obstacles…
This is extremely important because the message needs to support who you are trying to target.
The better you know your target audience, the more they will empathize with your message and become invested in your product.
This will help you personalize your newsletters, build a trusting relationship and encourage them to consume your products or services.
✅ Tip 2 – Design an attractive lead magnet
Once you are clear about the target objective, what you are selling and to whom? This needs to be defined.
Which hook do you plan to use?
Most online stores have a discount code as a lead magnet.
The truth reveals that this is not the best strategy (although there are exceptions, such as online stores).
Think about it.
If the person has entered your website, they are interested in what you sell, whether they are ready to buy or not.
Thus, the discount code only serves for the person to subscribe and get a cheaper purchase.
This will not interest them to invest in your newsletters, resulting in unsubscribing from your email list.
In the end, the objective is to create a qualified subscriber database.
💡 For example, a cosmetic store that uses a test with multiple questions as a lead magnet and asks users about the products they are interested in, their daily routines, age and gender, type of skin, etc.
The user will receive the test result in their inbox. This will work as the starting point to send the user newsletters sharing interesting facts about cosmetics, the brand itself, news and promotions, trending products, etc. The objective is to sell a product from their catalog.
The lead magnet must have a direct relationship with the products you will sell.
- It must solve a problem.
- It should be quick and easy to consume.
- It must add value.
✅ Tip 3 – Design the pages involved
With your lead magnet ready, you will have to design the squeeze page. This is where you will offer that attraction hook to get your subscribers’ email addresses.
You can also add a pop-up or a subscription box on the blog or home page.
These depend on your business model and strategy.
Creating a squeeze page is a great way to capture email addresses and increase traffic to your newsletters.
Also, you can design a double opt-in page where subscribers can confirm that they want to subscribe to your newsletter.
Lastly, the “thank you” page for subscribing.
Many link the lead magnet on this page for subscribers to download. Others deliver it in the first welcome email.
✅ Tip 4 – Choose your email marketing tool
There are multiple tools available on the market.
You should choose the tool based on the frequency and number of newsletters you intend to send, the size of your subscriber list, whether you want to create an automated email, etc.
If you start from scratch, I recommend MailerLite, which has a free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers to send unlimited emails.
On the other hand, Active Campaign is the one I used today.
I like it because of the tag system to segment subscribers and the personalized automation options.
✅ Tip 5 – Define your strategy to capture leads
There are multiple ways:
1 – You can include a subscription box on the web pages with more visits (the home page, some popular product categories, blog articles, …)
2 – You can invest in paid advertising in search engines like Google or on social networks like Facebook and Instagram to capture leads with your lead magnet.
3 – You can add the link of your lead page to your social media profiles’ bios or share content.
4 – You can work on the affiliation and ask other brands with good databases to subscribe to yours.
5 – You can organize a free online workshop or try to be interviewed on podcasts or YouTube channels related to your sector to promote your lead magnet.
There are a thousand ways to reach your ideal client and get them to subscribe to your newsletter.
✅ Tip 6 – Design your newsletter
Decide how you want your newsletter to look. Do you want to add a corporate image to your header? Which signature will you use? Are you planning to use ready-made templates?
Of course, you must be careful with the images you choose. The photos you share should have good quality, even if they affect loading times or slow the delivery of your emails.
If you can do without images and keep a simple design for your newsletter, the reader can focus on the text itself without distraction.
The font you use is also important. When your subscribers have been reading you for a while and get used to your frequency, using a distinctive font as soon as they open the email will allow them to know that it is you straightaway.
✅ Tip 7 – Establish Frequency
You must establish a sending frequency. If you send newsletters in a timely manner to sell something specific, but then abandon your list, the consequences are:
1 – You lose an opportunity to create a bond between you and your subscribers.
2 – They will forget their subscription to your newsletter, and the moment they receive something again, the chances that they unsubscribe are high.
Therefore, I recommend that you be consistent. If you are betting on email marketing, do it strategically.
Create a sending frequency. I recommend that you do it at least once a week. Think about the number of things we do in a single day. If you send emails once a month or every two weeks … Do you really think they will remember you?
With the newsletter, the goal is to be in your subscriber’s minds. So that when you offer them something that may interest them, they are ready to buy from you. In other words it is not a cold sale, because a trusting relationship has already been established.
The higher the frequency, the more you will settle into their routine.
✅ Tip 8 – Define Subject
The subject is one of the most important things in your newsletter.
If you don’t arouse curiosity, the recipient of the email won’t click to open the email, and the opportunity to sell your product will be lost.
Make sure your email subjects are eye-catching and addressed directly to the subscriber. Use numbers and action verbs, contradictions, and any other resources that makes your email stand out from the rest.
Of course, do not promise content they will not find in your newsletter to generate curiosity and click. This can provoke rejection and have the opposite effect to what you were looking for.
✅ Tip 9 – Write Newsletter content
The content of your emails should be entertaining and attractive to read.
Use storytelling or tell your subscribers anecdotes that relate to the products or services you sell.
Talk about emotions and situations in which the reader can be reflected and cover their obstacles or problems at that moment. Ensure you show your product or service as the solution.
Tell the news of your business, your day-to-day. Humanize and bring your brand closer.
The length of the newsletter is not as important as the content inside it.
An email of over 800 words can indeed be more difficult to read in full.
You have to tell an entertaining story and use your words carefully so that the recipient reads the email in full.
However, it all comes down to the commitment and interest of your subscribers.
I usually read more than 1,000 words emails because I am subscribed to newsletters from other brands and professionals in the sector that I enjoy reading.
Ecommerce companies usually send catalog newsletters with a short text, which does not mean that it is the most effective.
The truth is that most businesses don’t take advantage of the newsletter’s full potential.
You can also tell stories, anecdotes, and reflections related to your product catalog.
In the end, eliciting positive emotions is the first step in persuading readers to buy.
If you need an estimate on how long your newsletter should be, an email between 400 – 800 words is standard for best results.
✅ Tip 10 – Create CTAs or Calls to Action
You must be clear about this:
One email. One goal.
It is not practical to ask the subscriber to do several different things in the same email.
For example: buy X product, follow me on social media and watch my latest YouTube video. If you are fortunate, the reader will do one of these actions.
Each newsletter will have a goal, and every time you add a link or invite readers to take action, the action must be consistent with that goal.
Usually, the call to action is included at the end of the text.
The exception to the rule “one email, one goal” is when we have several related products or services that we can offer at the same time.
For example, an online store that sells different models of sneakers, socks, and other accessories.
Postscripts also play an essential role here.
It is interesting to add postscripts at the end of the emails since many people only scan the text.
I advise you to add postscripts to summarize or reinforce what you said in the email, make a reminder, or add remarkable information.
✅ Tip 11 – Analyze results
Finally, one of the most important parts of making a newsletter is analyzing whether the newsletter works.
In your email marketing tool, you will find a section with reports and metrics where you can see the deliverability of the email (how many emails have been successfully sent), the open rate, the link clicks rate, conversions…
Checking your metrics from time to time keeps track of your newsletter’s performance and to see which types of emails work best for your subscribers.
So these are all the steps you must follow to create a successful newsletter, get a committed subscriber list and sell on a recurring basis with your emails.
Conclusion
I hope these tips will help you make an effective newsletter! You are encouraged to send emails to your subscriber list and sell through this powerful channel.
If you have any questions or want to tell me what you think of the post, we will read your comments. 🙂