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Newsletters are a great way to build relationships with your clients. Much like writing email sequences, newsletter writing can eventually increase web traffic and social media followers, boost sales, improve your company’s reputation, and make your clients feel valued. Newsletters are creative and intimate pieces of information that help your clients feel personally connected to your company’s journey and growth.
Why Publish a Monthly Newsletter
Newsletters give your followers and customers quick access to vital information related to your company’s offerings, services, updates, and more. Like all great businesses, you have a clear and adaptable inbound marketing strategy. As with all strategies, your inbound marketing will require a lot of content. You want to make sure that content gets read and found in a timely manner.
Social media posts and stories, blog posts, videos, giveaways, discounts, free downloads, and more can all happen within a week. While you may run into little issues posting and promoting daily content, all your hard work could easily get lost in the crowd. Newsletters are like your own personal matrix, one that’s professional and client-friendly of course. In addition to providing new information, newsletters help consolidate your monthly content so clients and followers can read or re-read your content in one sitting.
Newsletters also make your business feel more accessible and relaxed. While you may include some sales promotions in your newsletters, many customers would prefer to not receive a sales pitch every time they open their email. Newsletters help customers understand who you are beyond what you’re selling.
What to Put in Your First Monthly Newsletter
Once you’ve established a beautiful website, email marketing strategy, and social media profile(s), you’ll want to start drafting your first monthly newsletter. As far as formatting goes, newsletters are fun and easy to put together.
I recommend starting a monthly newsletter as soon as your company surpasses certain goals. With newsletters, customers want to feel as if they’ve stumbled upon an active and successful business. Basically, newsletters help lure customers into your epic party.
The Anatomy of an Amazing Newsletter
Monthly newsletters come in all shapes and sizes, but most contain the following key elements. Be sure to review this list before publishing your monthly newsletter, as the following info can help your newsletter shine!
Compelling Subject Line
Remember your monthly newsletter will arrive in your followers’/potential customers’ inboxes. As with all emails, you’ll want to create an irresistibly clickable subject line. Most subject lines are 6-10 words in length and don’t contain characters, spam words, or messages in all caps. Be sure to exclude the word “newsletter” in your subject line as well.
I recommend writing subject lines that tease and entice the customer. Don’t be afraid to get close and personal or be short and sweet. Perhaps you want to pose a bold question about a desire the customer thought they alone had. Email subject headlines range from urgent to clever, so feel free to get creative.
And if something doesn’t work, you can always test, test, test, until you get it right.
Featured Content
As mentioned, newsletters are a great way to consolidate new and previous content into one place. Be sure to include a balance of new and old information. You want to make sure the newsletter offers information the customer can’t receive anywhere else.
This is where sharing your company’s story comes in handy. Customers are interested in reading about who you are, how you got started, and where you’re headed. Consider posting a behind-the-scenes tour of your offices or info on employee of the month. New testimonials, reviews, and other forms of positive client feedback are helpful as well.
As for old information, I recommend sharing content that performed well last month whether it was a blog post, instructional video, or adorable photo of your cat napping atop your content strategy notes. Try to narrow down former content to just 1-2 outstanding posts or videos.
CTAs
As you know from email marketing, any piece of email content must contain clear and compelling CTAs. In newsletters, CTAs help guide readers to the pieces of content you want them to read next. I recommend making these CTAs bold, colorful, sparkly, etc. While you don’t want the CTAs to distract people from your content, you want to make sure they are clear and easily accessible.
Organized Layout
Once you have your newsletter copy and distributable content, you’ll want to choose the perfect layout. Don’t let newsletter formatting intimidate you, especially if you see yourself as more of a writer than a designer. Email automation platforms such as Mailchimp and Constant Contact have lovely, creative newsletter templates to pick from and each one are easy to copy & paste content into particular boxes.
I recommend choosing one template and using it consistently. Customers want to view newsletters that are familiar to them and visually pleasing. Be sure to choose a template that will easily allow you to upload the right amount of videos and photos in addition to blog posts, updates, etc.
Social Links
Be sure to include social links to your website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. so new and old readers can keep in touch. You never which piece of content in your newsletter will inspire your followers to spread the word about you.
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