When it comes to newsletters, best practice dictates that you:
- Have a content strategy – know where your content is coming from, when it is coming, what it will be about, how it supports your communications strategy and/or business plan and why it is of relevance to your readership.
- Keep your newsletter between 3-5 stories long – remember most people are accessing email via mobile devices. You don’t want to send them on a scroll fest. Plus the focus should be on quality not quantity.
These top two tips will help you:
- Set a regular publication date – then stick to it. Make sure it is distributed on that date religiously. This could be weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or bi-annually based on how much quality content you can create and how frequently.
Then:
- Keep stories under 100 words and link to somewhere subscribers can ‘read more’– this allows you to measure click throughs, thus interest in/popularity of content, plus it keeps the newsletter short.
- Link from your newsletter back to your website or social media pages, not external pages – each story should have a call to action that drives traffic to your website, not someone else’s.
- Ensure that you comply with Australia’s spam laws.
Every newsletter you send out should deliver:
- Content: People subscribe to recieve content. They click through to see more content. Content is King. So, create a content source list which may include website content, blogs, news articles, case studies, testimonials, promotions, competitions, seasonal campaigns, internal and external events.
- Quality: If the content in your newsletter is poor or purely hard sales, people will stop clicking on links, even stop opening your emails. Eventually they will probably unsubscribe. Make sure your content is relevant, useful and engaging.
- Consistency: Stick to your publication date. It speaks to your reliability and credibility as an organisation, plus your commitment to subscribers. Sending out unscheduled ad hoc emails makes them look like the desperate money grab they probably are.
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