Six Strategies to Get Your Email Newsletters Noticed

When done right, email newsletters are a personal, effective and low-cost way for businesses to connect directly with their customers. But with consumers receiving dozens of promotional emails per day, how can you ensure your content is getting noticed?

If you’re looking to increase open rates, drive click-throughs to your website and attract new subscribers to your email database, consider these six important tips when creating your next digital newsletter.

Get creative with your subject line

Roughly 47% of all email recipients will open an email based on the subject line, so it’s important that you consider what will get noticed. Try teasing your readers with enticing news or a special offer, and don’t be afraid to be a little playful and creative. If brand-appropriate, emojis can add visual flair and personality to a subject line – and research shows they also increase open rates by almost 50%.

Timing and frequency are key

When you send your newsletters, and how often, can have a big impact on the overall effectiveness of your campaign. Unfortunately, there’s no hard and fast rule when it comes to the optimal time of day to hit send as every audience is different. Generally, the data suggests that its best to deliver promotional emails either first thing in the morning (8 a.m.) or around lunch hour (1 p.m.) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though it’s important to think about who you’ll be reaching and understand their habits so you can anticipate when they’ll be most receptive. Similarly, it’s important to send newsletters on a relatively frequent basis – so that you stay connected and top-of-mind – but avoid bombarding inboxes repeatedly as you’ll risk annoying your customers and drive them to hit the dreaded unsubscribe button.

Create consistency with a branded email template

With so much email spam circulating these days, it’s vital to ensure your e-newsletter looks professional, recognizable and like a natural extension of your brand. Newsletters are an important part of your marketing arsenal, so be consistent and use a template that includes your company logo, fonts and signature colours and graphics. Branded visuals create a level of trust and will help readers identify your business immediately.

Think about readability

With consumer attention-spans at an all-time low, it’s essential to keep your email content succinct and to the point. Use simple, web-friendly fonts and structure your copy with content blocks that can be scanned quickly. Easy-to-digest subheads and bullet points will help readers skim your copy and increase the chance of information retention. It’s also important to note that more than half of all emails are opened on a mobile device, so be sure to check that your content is not only optimized for desktop computers, but for small-screen devices as well.

Use images sparingly

Beautiful images are a great way to add visual interest to a digital newsletter, but try to use them with purpose. If your template features too many slick promotional graphics, the email will start to look like an impersonal ad campaign. It’s also good to remember that some readers won’t see the images at all — the images could be blocked by the browner or disabled by the recipient. As such, avoid communicating key information in a photo unless you repeat it in the body text and remember to add descriptive ‘Alt Text’ to each photo.

Don’t ignore the analytics

Professional email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and HubSpot offer a number of valuable built-in measurement tools to help users analyze the success of each campaign. From click-through URLs to open-rates by geography, analyzing metrics on content performance will help you see what’s working (and what’s not) so you can work on optimizing your newsletters over time. We also recommend experimenting with A/B testing to see what subject lines resonate the most with readers or what time-of-day is optimal for your subscriber base.