Girl Boss Boutique
If you run a business, you should have collected and formed your own email list by now.
If you haven’t, you are making a dire mistake.
Marketing through email by sending out newsletters is a great way to let your customers and the public know about what’s going on, and the various deals and discounts they can avail of.
Not only is it the most cost-effective tool for marketing (it’s completely free!), it helps you develop a huge following of people who like your brand and understand it.
People who see your emails are more likely to remember it, more so than your posts on social media.
This is because social media is a competitive space, and they view a huge number of posts one after the other.
The likelihood of a person receiving the same number of emails is very low.
Besides, people tend to view businesses that send out newsletters as more professional too.
Do you need any more reasons to start newsletter marketing? Here are a few tips to help you along:
1. Include content that is valuable for your audience
Don’t just start off directly by asking them to come and buy your products.
Based on the industry you work in, include content that is of some value to your readers.
For example, if you sell health and fitness equipment you should include content regarding fitness regimes and health routine.
If you find it hard to categorize, apply the 80/20 rule here: 80% of your newsletter should be things valuable to the reader, and 20% should be about your business.
2. A good subscriber list
Don’t ever sit idle thinking that you have the perfect subscriber list; keep adding to whatever you have every day.
One way to increase the number of subscribers is to add a sign-up button to your blog or websites.
A lot of websites give incentives such freebie goods and downloadable e-books for signing up.
If you have a similar system in place, your subscriber count will increase in no time.
3. Invite responses
Most newsletters and official e-mails are often sent out under the ‘no reply’ tag.
However, encouraging replies is a good thing; you can have some direct contact with the ultimate customer, and understand their specific needs, wants and concerns.
In order to get replies from your readers, you need to first tweak your language, and make it less formal.
Your subject lines should be interesting and eye-catching, such that it would make the reader want to open the mail.
4. Make it a personal
You will find that a lot of newsletters today start off by addressing you by your first name.
This is an excellent way of making the newsletters more personal.
Most of them would also have their top headings and most of the other text in the second person, like “our top picks for you this week” and so on.
Using this kind of language makes it feel like a conversation, something which they are also a part of, instead of just a cold commercial promotion letter.
5. Make it more visually appealing
When your reader takes one look at the newsletter, he/she shouldn’t look at a crowded, visually tiring arrangement of text and images.
Keep the design simple and elegant. It is not absolutely necessary that you include images; just keep a simple arrangement of texts, with a few icons.
Putting in a lot of images makes your newsletter look more like spam.
At the same time, be sure to make your emails more interactive, because ultimately, the purpose is to drive traffic to your website.
6. Put an unsubscribe option where it’s visible
Of course, unsubscribing is quite the opposite of what you try to achieve through sending out newsletters.
But make the unsubscribe button plain and visible, otherwise, users are more likely to mark your emails as spam, which will cause more problems in the future.
Don’t be disheartened by the unsubscribers.
If they’re not interested in your emails, they cannot be of any use to your business.
If you find a lot of people unsubscribing from your lists, it means it is time to change your lists and include people of a different demographic.
7. Make your emails mobile friendly
This is a very important feature you need to add.
Make your emails mobile-friendly, or you’ll have a lot of unsubscribers.
Most people view their emails on their phones these days, and if your emails don’t open properly on phones, fewer people will be reading them.
Newsletter marketing is simple and easy, and most importantly completely cost-free.
If you haven’t set up a mailing list for your business yet, now is a good time to start.
