Who doesn’t love a good newsletter? Gone are the days where inboxes are bogged down with pure sales fodder and emails laden with substance-less pitches, we’re far more careful to curate our inboxes these days subscribing only to businesses who are going to add value to our experience of their brand and enhance our lives, making things easier, more fun or informative.
Email newsletters are great tools to help build your brand’s authority as an industry expert in your field, showcase your products, services and offers, set the tone of voice for your brand and build trust and credibility.
If you’re considering writing a newsletter for your small business here are some things to consider before jumping in to write your first newsletter:
- Define the purpose of your newsletter Are you sending your newsletter purely to drive sales? Do you want to add value by sharing your expertise? Or perhaps it’s to reward your loyal customers who regularly engage with your brand in person. By clearly stating the purpose of your newsletter up front you’ll be able to inform your email newsletter content strategy moving forward.
- Choose an email newsletter programme Email newsletter platforms such as MailChimp are great tools to invest in when moving forward with your newsletter, they enable you to store your customers’ data securely and build engaging, attractive, on-brand campaigns you can easily replicate month in and month out. Have a browse to find the one that works for your business.
- Set a realistic schedule that won’t spam your audience There is nothing, and I do mean nothing, worse than a brand that spams their customers with endless emails, that’s a one-way ticket to the spam folder and the unsubscribe button for your customers. Make sure you have enough variety in your content to justify your email marketing strategy and schedule, start off with a once-a-month email blast and up to once a fortnight if you’ve got tonnes of relevant add valuable content to share.
- Create a content plan Build headings into a word or notes document to get a sense of the sort of content you’d like to share. You could have a heading covering the latest news and business updates, then another on new stock and products and another on a behind-the-scenes look at your business or even a regular section on offers and discounts. Think about what matters most to your audience and find a way to tap into that for newsletter content.
- Create a strategy for building your subscriber database All of this of course is a moo point (a cow’s opinion, it’s moo) if you don’t have any subscribers to add to your mailing list. How will you encourage current customers to sign up to receive your newsletter, how will you reach new audience members to build your subscription list? Don’t forget to consider GDPR in building your strategy and ensure you keep your subscribers’ data secure.
Hannah, Heyday Digital Agency