Creating A Newsletter Strategy For Your Business

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Email marketing is an invaluable asset for every business.

If you’re hesitant to invest time and energy into your email strategy, you should probably know that the average return on investment for email marketing is $42 for every $1 spent! It’s hard to beat that kind of ROI with any other marketing techniques. But email marketing isn’t a “get-rich-quick” approach–it times time, consistency, and strategy.

With a solid email marketing strategy, you’ll be able to build out marketing funnels that move subscribers toward knowing, liking, and trusting your brand. Newsletters in particular are the best way to nurture your audience over time, leading to more trust in your business–and eventually more conversions. 

Today we’re focusing on how you can build a newsletter strategy that works for you and your business.

PS: But if you’re interested in learning more about automated sequences for your business, head over to this blog post. 

The Purpose of Newsletters

Let’s start with why newsletters are a useful part of your email strategy. (Hint: It’s all about NURTURING–which leads to more conversions!)

Newsletters are designed to “nurture” your audience–which essentially just means you want to stay top of mind by being a valuable resource to their business. Your subscribers know you’re an expert in what you do and they’ll trust that you’ll be able to deliver what you promise. If you’ve nurtured your audience well, email marketing will serve as a reliable lead funnel for your business. 

When you send newsletters, you’re giving customers free valuable tips, resources, advice, and insight . Even if you’re not making a hard sales pitch in your newsletters (and you shouldn’t be–at least not all the time), you’re slowly getting your subscribers to know you and your style more. It’s a good idea to share tidbits about your personal life in newsletters too! People buy from people–your subscribers want to know they can trust you.

Why Consistency Matters

Even though we fully support email marketing for any and all businesses, it’s also important that you can create a content calendar and stick to it. If you’re not able to commit to sending newsletters at least once a month, don’t start email marketing just yet. It might not be  worth building your email list if you’re going to ghost your subscribers. 

Customers need consistency from your business if you want to maintain their trust. That means sending out emails relatively frequently, from once a week to once a month. Regular newsletters keep your subscribers interested and up-to-date on your business while making sure your brand always stays top of mind. You don’t want your audience to forget about you! Maintaining an engaged email list is key (head to this blog to learn more), so you want to make sure you keep them engaged by sending consistent and valuable content.

If creating a bi-weekly newsletter feels overwhelming to you, try content batching to help streamline and simplify the process–check out the blog post How to Plan a Month’s Worth of Content in One Day for details. By planning multiple pieces of content at once, regularly scheduled newsletters will feel much more manageable.

Create a Strategy That Works for You

Your strategy will depend on you and your business, but there are still a few best practices that will help you craft a successful strategy:

• Choose the day of the week you’ll send out your newsletters, and stick with it! Remember that consistency is key. If you’re just starting out, try to send a newsletter every other week. Once a month is the bare minimum.

• Commit to providing valuable information for your subscribers by following the 80/20 rule. That means your newsletters should be 80% valuable content, and 20% sales. The more free value, the better! You want to be viewed as a subject matter expert, and you can do that by sharing information about your expertise.

• Write content with your ideal client in mind. What do they need and want? Providing valuable tips, insight, and recommendations that support your audience will help you build trust and your business’s reputation.

• Don’t over complicate it! You don’t need to write novels in your newsletters. In fact, writing too long of newsletters will lose the interest of subscribers. Usually a newsletter between 300-500 words is the sweet spot.

• Use formatting to make your newsletters skimmable. Add bold section headings, use bold and italic text to draw attention to certain important phrases, and maybe even add images where appropriate.

• Infuse your personality! People buy from people. Especially if you own a small business, your subscribers likely want to hear what you’re up to and the behind-the-scenes of your business. 

Many business owners like to choose a newsletter template and follow the same content outline for each newsletter. Consider following a similar format for each email, like starting with life updates, diving into tips, sharing helpful resources, and wrapping up with a few sentences of updates about your services and availability for the month. Having a repeatable process saves you time–and it also makes your newsletter style familiar for your readers. 

The Next Steps

Creating a newsletter strategy will take commitment and practice, but after the first few newsletters, you’ll definitely get the hang of it. We promise, newsletters can be fun if you let them be!

If you need customized support creating a newsletter strategy for your business, an email marketing intensive is a great place to start. We’ll be able to nail down exactly what your strategy entails and give you direction and clarity in your email marketing moving forward.