Keeping in touch with customers is an ongoing process that needs to be managed on a regular basis. If you want your marketing efforts to be successful, you need to find ways to keep people informed about what’s new, special, or different about your business. It’s not enough just to post on social media once in a while or put up a sign outside now and again. You need to create strategies for staying top of mind with customers as often as possible. The best way to do that is through the use of newsletters.
A great newsletter can be the perfect way for businesses to reach out and connect with their customers on a personal level. It doesn’t have to be complicated either! Check out these tips for how you can start creating and sending out effective newsletters sooner rather than later.
Know your audience
Simply put, the more you know about your customers, the better your newsletter will be. From knowing who your audience is to what their interests are, you can create a more engaging and relevant newsletter that is more likely to be read. What’s more, you can also use your knowledge of your audience to tailor your newsletter to various sections of your customer base. When you know who you’re sending your newsletter to, you’ll be able to create messages that resonate with your readers and resonate with your business as well. Beyond that, you’ll also be able to find the best ways to send your newsletter out as well.
Create great content
For a newsletter to be successful, it needs to be engaging and interesting. If people aren’t reading it, they aren’t going to have any reason to stay on your list or continue to be a part of your community. You’ll want to make sure that you’re creating your newsletter with your customer’s best interests in mind. When you do, you’re more likely to keep customers engaged with your content as well as your brand and company overall.
Here are some tips for creating great content for your newsletter:
Know your purpose
Before you start creating content for your newsletter, you’ll want to know why you’re doing it in the first place. What goal is your newsletter trying to achieve? What do you want customers to get out of reading the content in your newsletter?
Create a theme
Having a theme for your newsletter will help you to create content that’s consistent and cohesive. It will also help you to find a common thread between your different newsletter issues.
Get creative
At the same time, you don’t want to be too serious and boring. Instead, think about how you can flip your content and make it more interesting and engaging to read.
Find the right platform for your newsletter
Once you’ve created your newsletter, you’ll need to decide what platform you plan to use to send it out to your customers. While there are many options out there, not all of them are created equal. What’s more, you also have to consider the types of customers you have and the different platforms that they use and frequent. If you have an older customer base, for example, you may want to look into platforms that are more common for older generations.
Mailchimp and Hubspot are great options that offer very robust free options. We find both equally good, and we use Mailchimp ourselves. Both offer numerous email templates, analytics, automation, and social media integrations. The major differences come out when you start to pay. Mailchimp is significantly cheaper than Hubspot, but Hubspot may be worth the extra costs if you have a large business or looking for more features and are willing to pay. You can’t go wrong with either one though.
Create the template and assets
Before you start sending out your newsletter, you’ll want to create the template and assets for it as well. Otherwise, you won’t know what your newsletter actually looks like. For example, if you plan to include photos in your newsletter, you’ll want to make sure you have an image selected and ready to go. If you want to include links to your website and other assets, you’ll want to have those created and ready to go as well.
Send test emails
Before you send out your first newsletter, you’ll want to send a test email out to yourself first. That way, you can double-check that everything is set up correctly and that there aren’t any errors present in your newsletter. If you notice that there are issues with the newsletter itself, you want to correct them before you start sending the newsletter to your entire customer base. Otherwise, you risk confusing and frustrating your subscribers with your first newsletter.
Conclusion
A newsletter is an excellent tool for keeping customers up to date with what’s going on in your business. It’s a great way to provide them with valuable content and give them insight into your brand and company. If you want to create an impact with your newsletter, you want to make sure that it is engaging and interesting to read. You also want to make sure that it reflects your brand and company values in a positive way. Beyond that, you also want to make sure that you’re sending out your newsletter at the right times. You’ll want to send it out during times when your audience is most engaged with your brand and most likely to open and read your newsletter.