Email newsletters are a great way to connect and engage with your audience, as well as boost sales - the average ROI is $42 for every $1 spent on email marketing, and nearly 9 out of every 10 marketers use email marketing to distribute content!

However, email marketing (doing it right, at least) isn’t actually simple or easy to master. There are several things that you need to focus on if you’re going to create email newsletters and run email marketing campaigns that really pop.

That’s exactly why we put together this article - we’re going to share the 10 top tips for creating engaging email newsletters with you so you can successfully capture your subscriber’s minds, deepen the brand-customer relationship, and promote your business.

Why Are Email Newsletters So Important?

Email newsletters are an incredibly important way to not only engage on a deeper level with your subscriber community, but also promote your business, push specific products, and provide expert insight to your audience. 

Of course, social media is a great way to connect with your audience and will take up a huge part of your digital marketing strategy, especially with so many amazing platforms out there (think TikTok, Clubhouse, and Pinterest!). However, you definitely shouldn’t overlook email marketing, no matter how old school you think emails might be - they really do make a difference. Research shows that 59% of consumers say emails affect their purchase decisions, so it’s certainly something that you should be focusing on!

However, you do need to know how to create effective email newsletters to make sure that you are positively affecting your consumers.

10 Top Tips For Creating an Engaging Email Newsletters

1. Know Your Aim

When it comes to anything in marketing, there’s always an aim - you aren’t just going to send emails out for the fun of it. It’s important to know exactly what your aim is so that you can not only focus on specifically curating your email to promote your aim, but so you can also monitor your email newsletter success.

For example, if your aim is to push people to buy a product that you’ve recently launched, you will centre your email around this product and provide a link to purchase the product, and you can also then track how many purchases have been influenced by your email.

2. Focus On A Specific Topic

Email newsletters can, of course, contain a variety of content, but there should always be the main topic at the centre of the newsletter, otherwise, it’s going to appear incoherent and unattractive to read.

For example, if you’re a fashion brand, you could highlight a specific topic such as sustainable fashion and tell your customers the eco-friendly initiatives that your brand takes. Then, you could incorporate your products, blog posts, and even external content that your subscribers might find useful.

3. Send Valuable Content

The number one rule with email marketing is to never send anything that you wouldn’t read or that doesn’t add value to your subscriber’s lives. Everyone knows that the emails that contain very little valuable content are always simply deleted or marked as unread. 

So to ensure that yours isn’t one of these unfortunate emails, it’s simple - ensure you are sending valuable content that will improve or benefit your subscribers in some way.

4. Add Visual Content

Visual content produces 650% higher engagement than text-only communication, meaning that it’s a good idea to add some visual content into your emails.

Whether you choose to add an image of the product you’re talking about, or you add an unrelated but fun image, including a visual is a great idea. If you want to go a little further, the use of animated GIFs in emails has been shown to improve conversion rates by 103%.

5. Use Powerful Subject Lines

With research showing that 47% of recipients will open your email based solely on the subject line, it’s vital that you create powerful, engaging subject lines that grab the recipient’s attention and make them actually open the email.

Use captivating language and tell the recipient what’s to come if they open the email (this might sound basic, but a lot of brands don’t do this). Personalised subject lines boost open rates by 26% and ones with emojis increase open rates by 56%, so you might want to give both of these ideas a try!

6. Give Something To Your Audience For Free

The best way to engage people is by giving them something, and although you might be providing them high quality, valuable content, they might a little more! 

A great way to boost audience engagement and potentially increase sales is by providing them with something for free! For example, you could link a blog post to help them whilst showing your expertise, or you could give them a special discount code for products on your site.

7. Show Personality

Personality is essential in marketing - your business needs to stand out from the crowd and show authenticity to be fully seen. So, add some personality to your emails! 

Make sure there’s a difference between a bank’s email and yours - in other words, make a joke, add some personal touches, be real, and make your audience smile. If you make your audience happy, they will not only associate your business with positive emotion, but they will be more likely to purchase from you.

8. Potentially Add Some Third-party Content

Although you are sending an email newsletter to drum up business for your own brand, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with adding third party content. In fact, it might actually help to engage customers and boost your brand’s popularity.

Of course, you want to ensure that your email content is original and focused on your business, but you can connect your audience with some third-party content you think they will love. For example, link them to a blog post you like or that relates to your business!

9. Add Calls To Action

Research shows that emails with a single call-to-action increases click by 371% and sales by 1617%. So, it’s pretty self-explanatory that you should be using at least one call to action (but no more than 3) in your emails.

Whether you’re telling your audience to “Shop Now,” “Sign up”, or “Watch”, calls to action will help you direct your audience to where you want them to be, and improve engagement.

10. Make Sure Your Content Is Exclusive

The whole point of having a mailing list is that it’s exclusive. Of course, anyone can join it by signing up, but it’s exclusive in the sense that subscribers have access to exclusive content produced by your brand.

Therefore, keep it exclusive. Show sneak peeks of newsletters on social media, but never post content from your email newsletter onto your social media or website. Your aim should be to have people sign up to your mailing list, so make sure you don’t just give them the content without making them take any action.

You’re all ready to start creating powerful, effective email newsletters! However, if you still need a hand, or you’re looking for experts to create a digital marketing strategy for your business, get in touch with us.