It’s a challenge all email marketers face. How can I get people to care? What email newsletter tips can I use to excite my customers?

Email marketing is competitive. Simply sharing your latest blog post or promoting a sales campaign won’t inherently help you stand out.

The truth is, emails inundate us more than ever. Advancements in instant-messaging technology, social platforms and push notifications only make the problem worse.

From the most-recent data, the ROI of email marketing has decreased in recent years, landing at 36:1 ($36 in revenue for every $1 of costs) from 42:1 in the previous year.

That’s still an impressive ROI—showing how dominant email is as a marketing channel that drives sales.

So what gives? Why is it more difficult to create a successful email newsletter? Well, customers have higher expectations coupled with limited attention spans because of bloated inboxes.

Yet email remains one of the best mediums for how to grow your business using content marketing.

To get it to work, you have to construct a strong narrative in your email newsletters, messaging that compels readers and a user experience that optimizes for conversions & more sales.

It’s not easy, but you can improve results by making a few tweaks to your newsletter strategy.

In this guide, you’ll discover the key benefits of email marketing and learn five email newsletter tips to make your own campaigns more successful.

What Are the Benefits of Email Newsletter Marketing?

It’s easy to guess the typically cited benefits of email. You can reach your audience directly, email is cost-efficient & increases sales, email newsletters drive engagement, etc.

But email marketing with newsletters is special because it’s particular for one specific segment of your audience: existing customers.

Research shows that email marketing works best when focused on “post-purchase” opportunities. In other words, steer efforts towards upsell revenue, not net-new revenue.

Makes sense. Other types of marketing emails like transactional emails used in sales sequences target leads and potential new customers.

But existing customers are more likely to subscribe to your newsletter. That’s because, according to the above study, they want “to learn about the products they purchase.”

Simply put, once they become new customers or are at least near the bottom of the sales funnel, a newsletter offers them the chance to feel nurtured by you as a customer.

So what are some of the unique email newsletter benefits you can leverage from these insights?

Unique Benefits of an Email Newsletter for Existing Customers

When optimizing your newsletters, ensure you’re providing value for actual subscribers.

Email newsletters shouldn’t assume recipients are still just learning about your brand, so aim for these unique benefits from newsletters to extract as much return as possible.

• You can collect feedback from customers. Email newsletters are perfect for asking about satisfaction levels, sentiments and ideas.
• Educate customers. Subscribers want to learn about your services, understand how they can get the most out of them and stay abreast of new features or updates.
• Increase upsell revenue. Email newsletters promoting product suggestions or discounts & deals almost always yield great profits.
• Drive loyalty via reputation marketing. Telling stories and connecting with customers emotionally means they’ll more likely refer you and become a fan of your business..

What Makes a Successful Email Newsletter?

Now that you know what benefits to aim towards from your email newsletter, how can you realize them?

Remember, we mentioned above that simply sending out information about your company or promotional campaigns isn’t sufficient.

Email ROI has slightly decreased because not enough marketers have upped their content game.

Compel readers with the “hook, line and sinker” approach to marketing. Grab their attention, deliver on the promise with memorable associations and then inspire engagement.

For example, say you’re sharing news about a product update.

I don’t know about you, but I see emails like this in my inbox every day, glossing over most of them if I open them at all since they look like the engineers who coded the updates wrote them.

But if I see an email about a product update from a brand I love because they have a reputation for sharing news in an interesting way? Now I’m intrigued.

Is there a relatable pain point addressed? Is there messaging that makes me feel like the email is for me? Is there a solution to the problem connected to benefits that I can understand?

Creating a successful email newsletter requires great content, good timing and other content marketing know-how.

Let’s review actionable email marketing newsletter tips to help you get there so you can increase conversion rates, improve revenue and grow your brand.

Email Marketing Newsletter Tips

1. Write a Compelling Headline as Your Subject
2. Make the Content Relevant to Your Audience
3. Write Amazing Copy That Converts
4. Map the Message to the Buyer-Journey Stage
5. A/B-Test All the Things!

1. Write a Compelling Headline as Your Subject

One of the easiest ways to improve your emails is to write great headlines in the subject field.

Make each headline should short, interesting and relevant to your audience; otherwise, recipients won’t open the message and read your content.

Shorter headlines of five to seven words often perform well, but it’s important to test variations with your audience to find what works for them.

Avoid words that are likely to trigger an email provider’s spam filter or turn off customers in general.

For example, “buy,” “order,” “clearance,” “cash,” “cheap,” “money” and “price” aren’t very intriguing.

To generate interest in your email newsletters, try the following:

• Use the subject line to make an announcement.
• Ask a question in the subject line and provide the answer in the body of the email.
• Offer a valuable tip in the subject line.
• Use imperatives to direct the reader. This works best if you want people to download something or sign up for an event.

2. Make Content Relevant to Your Audience

Are you an email marketer who wants your newsletter to make you the hero at your company? Write content that’s actually relevant to your audience and speaks to them specifically.

This means you need to research your target audience thoroughly, understand their pain points.

First, segment by audience information. Email marketers who craft unique messaging for different segments report an average increase in revenue of 760%!

Examples of email segmentation include:

• Geographic (where people live);
• Psychographic (lifestyle characteristics);
• Behavioral (how your audience found you, how they engage with your product, etc.); and
• Demographic (age, gender, etc.).

When you segment subscribers, you can tailor email newsletters to your audience, making them more likely to convert.

3. Write Amazing Copy That Converts

But I’m an email marketer for a chain of hardware stores who needs to push plumbing supplies this week! How am I supposed to make that sexy?

Here’s why you shouldn’t let doubt sink your newsletter down the drain….

There’s no followup to the above sentence. But I did write a compelling line referencing industry-related humor, didn’t I?

Want to know how to seize people’s attention? Humor and puns are a great tactic for subject lines. But there are many others.

Callback time! Remember when I introduced the previous subsection with a question asking you if you want to be the hero at your company?

Yes, that was a copywriting technique to appeal to your personal desires. And it works wonders. 

,It’s also important to write like you’re talking to a friend. Conversational writing connects with audiences and persuades them towards taking action.

Just be sure to not literally write like you speak!

Next, don’t obscure your message with jargon.

Whether you sell a $10 item aimed or one worth $5,000, communicating value propositions clearly and with action words is one of the most impactful email copywriting tips to follow.

Lastly, demonstrate to your target audience that you actually know them. People like to feel identified. Let’s look at an example.

This email from a newsletter caters to its audience, service providers, by acknowledging to them that they’re experts. Service providers definitely love to hear that; it makes them feel respected.

But the best part of this copywriting trick? Explicitly saying who your audience is (“as a business owner…”).

When you see your name, title, identity marker, etc., you subconsciously pay attention. It’s that simple.

4. Map the Message to the Buyer’s Journey Stage

What is the buyer’s journey? It’s the path a customer follows to purchase from your company.

When you set up a sales funnel, the buyer’s journey is how that funnel looks from the customer’s perspective.

You should have content for every stage to reflect the buyer’s needs and push them forward in their journey.

For instance, a lead or new customer at the top of the funnel—the start of their journey—has pain points but is still discovering your brand; pushy calls-to-action aren’t ideal for them.

Conversely, you should craft more sales-oriented messaging for those at the bottom of the funnel. They’re ready to buy—or ready to buy even more!.

5. A/B-Test All the Things!

A/B-testing is a way to compare two pieces of copy and determine which one performs better.

You can test an alternate subject line or different body copy for valuable future insights to help you improve open rates, click-through rates or conversion rates.

In fact, you don’t have to restrict yourself to copy! There are lots of examples of A/B-testing for emails, like calls-to-action, images or even testimonials.

The key to A/B-testing effectively is to change just one variable each time you run a test.

If you want to test headlines, for example, the headline is the only thing you should change. The content, images and formatting would all stay the same. This ensures statistical significance.

Once you decide to conduct an A/B-test, determine how you’ll measure performance. You may want to see which headline leads to the highest open rate or which CTA gives you the best click-through rate.

Most email-service providers offer built-in A/B-testing functionality, but here’s a list of different A/B-testing tools for email to consider.

Master Your Email Newsletter With Amazing Content

Turning your email marketing newsletter into a conversion-generating machine relies on great content, strong messaging and a hyper-focused awareness of your target audience.

Email newsletters remain a tried-and-true way of engaging with existing customers to build your brand, drive sales and inspire loyalty if you follow these tested email marketing newsletter tips.

Consistently producing great email content doesn’t happen overnight. Connect with customers, save time and optimize resources by exploring an email writing service that suits your needs.

When you outsource email content to professional writers, you can focus on what you do best while your newsletter runs like clockwork.

It looks like any reports of email’s death have been greatly exaggerated indeed!

The post 5 Tips for Writing an Email Marketing Newsletter appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

For every dollar the average brand spends on email, they get a whopping $38 in return. That translates into a 3,800% ROI — can your client’s direct mailers and PPC banners do that?

Email is not only here to stay, it’s a platform for exciting new ideas and twists on tried-and-true content marketing strategies that could help launch your business to the next level. Here’s what you need to know about email copywriting and a few tips to help you master best practices, write effective emails and become the very best email copywriter you can be. Avocado toast sold separately.

Types of Email Copy

Email marketing is so much more than those rambling missives from brand ambassadors and social media interns that land in your inbox on their way to the trash pile. Personal messages can be an important part of your brand story, but there’s a way to go about that so you can keep your audience’s attention and still get your point across. But more on that later.

ALSO – What is Copywriting?

For now, it’s crucial you understand how diverse email copywriting can be and the many use cases that turn a simple electronic letter into a marketing powerhouse.

• Announce New Content. If a new blog post goes up but no one’s scrolling your blog to see it, the content almost doesn’t count. Yes, there’s SEO to help attract interest, but letting your warm leads (those on your email list) know there’s something new to read or otherwise act on is a smart move. Sound the virtual trumpets whenever your client launches an ebook, has a sale, conducts a webinar or has a few case studies that serve as a lead magnet.

• Newsletters. Almost every brand can benefit from a newsletter-style email that helps potential and current customers understand your brand relevancy and how you’re different from your competitors. Use it to highlight important news from across your industry, curate interesting and relevant content from a variety of sources, emphasize the people and processes behind a product or do some combination of all the above.

• Product Updates: Let subscribers know when an app is upgraded or a site has new functionality. A monthly digest is better if there are a lot of little updates unworthy of separate emails, but occasional revamps should be shared to remind customers the service is available and there’s even more value on tap.

• Prospecting Campaigns: When a company wants to get their product or service in front of a new buyer persona, they often start with a large list of contacts they can make the first contact with by sending emails. This prospecting campaign relies on smart, strategic content that speaks to common pain points and challenges that buyer persona often experiences. Content has to have wide appeal to the different types of contacts under the buyer persona, but still be engaging, empowering and compelling, with a strong call-to-action to respond.
  
• Onboarding Sequences: These email series help usher engaged users — subscribers, for instance — into paying customers. The idea is to build suspense and authority over several emails, delivering value and driving interest before eventually encouraging readers to take action.
  
• Post-Purchase Drips: Once somebody buys a product or service, it’s time to follow up with emails that welcome them on board, tell them how to make the most of their purchase, offer optional add-ons and otherwise nurture the relationship. This is a great tool to help nudge new customers into the advocacy stage of the buyer’s journey.
  
• Cart Abandonment Campaigns: As of 2018, cart abandonment rates sit at 79.17%. That’s a lot of consumers adding things to their virtual basket and then leaving without an actual buy. Cart abandonment campaigns can remind shoppers of what they left behind and make it easy to return and complete their purchase.
  
• Promotional Campaigns: This type of email marketing series builds with each successive message, provoking emotion, stoking curiosity and building suspense before announcing an offer and using imagery and other hooks to direct readers to a well-written landing page and cements a sale.

This is far from a comprehensive list — everything from form submission confirmations to event invitations could also conceivably be included — but it gives you an idea of how diverse and powerful email marketing campaigns can be.

ALSO – What Types Of Email Newsletters Are Most Effective in 2019?

Tips for Writing Emails That Connect and Convert

Know Your Audience — and Capitalize on that Knowledge

Every piece of content you send should have a purpose, and that purpose is to create a connection with the recipient. The emails you write need to resonate with your audience and be relevant not only to their lives and interests but also to where they’re at in their buyer journey. Consumers have different needs during the awareness stage than they do when they’re about to make a decision; tailor your words to match the timing and you’ll be far more persuasive.

To create content for your audience, you have to get to know them. Buyer personas, face-to-face conversations, competitor research, social studies, monitoring online activity and sending out surveys are all legitimate ways to form an accurate, detailed picture of your consumer base. Then it’s time to put that data to work.

Alex Membrillo, CEO of Cardinal Digital Marketing, brings it all together: “The trick to successful email marketing is delivering engaging content, relevant to your audience. The easiest way to ensure your content is relevant is to segment your email campaigns based on your target markets and audiences.”

“I was recently working with a client who wanted to feature a blog post in an upcoming e-newsletter that was geared to a Business-to-Consumer market. However, we determined that the target market and email list was for a Business-to-Business market. Therefore, the content didn’t make sense for the audience, and strategically the decision was made to change the focus of the email to a more relevant topic.”

ALSO – Email Marketing: Still Business’ Best Marketing Tool

Focus More on the Reader Than On Yourself

It’s amazing how hard it is to break away from marketing emails that lead with “I” or “we”. Yes, you’re advertising a business, but you should be advertising subtly and crafting consumer-centric content that doesn’t feel so self-centered and single-minded.

“This may seem like a basic statement, but many B2B-marketers (and B2C-marketers) still focus their content around telling people about how good they are,” says Operation Manager Ola Rask of Match2One. “The simple truth is this; people care a lot more about themselves than they do about you. In fact, they probably don’t care about you at all — so try to personalize your content and make them feel special.”

Tweak Your Writing

Spruce up your content and create copy that sells using a feature-benefit structure that helps consumers understand not only what you’re selling but why they should want it. Instead of boasting that a food processor has five speeds and a safety button, say it has five speeds to help you do everything from dicing to pureeing and a safety button to prevent accidents. If a customer reads a brand boast in your email and says, “So what?”, you haven’t clearly outlined the benefit.

Action words are helpful tools, too, in that action drives action. If you want your audience to get excited, use words that have power, such as:

• Discover
• Act
• Learn
• Explore
• Listen
• Win
• Make
• Create
• Develop
• Achieve

Aim For an Emotional Response

Famous examples of advertising such as soda companies showing people having fun and being sociable highlight an important (albeit sometimes misused) marketing principle – if you can help your audience connect emotionally with your brand and offering, they’re more likely to convert.

What they’re doing is in effect visually telling a story. You can also focus on storytelling in your email copy to elicit an emotional response. This could come in many forms including:

1. Fear of missing out
2. Warmth toward your brand or offering
3. Desire to associate with successful people
4. Curiosity to learn more

What emotional appeal you target will depend on the purpose of your communication and the target audience, but keep in mind choosing the right emotional appeal can drastically increase your success rates. 

Stick to One Clear Call to Action

The average open rate across all industries is just under 17%. The average click-through rate is 7.43%. That means 17% of the people on the average email list will even bother to open your emails and about 7.5 out of every 100 will click your CTA to see what’s on the other side. There are lots of reasons that number is on the low side, but asking too much of your email subscribers is a great way tank conversions.

Riah Solomon, Content Marketing Manager at SaaSOptics, feels strongly about the power of a solitary CTA. “Every email should have one main goal with a clear purpose, which means you should only have one main call to action. Write everything to point toward that call to action, and you’ll see click-through rates jump. Your readers need clarity and direction. When you give it to them, they will follow your lead.”

Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Great Email Subject Line

People are scanners by nature, and if your subject line doesn’t make them sit up and take notice, there won’t be anybody reading your email. To get more clicks, Charles Floate, Owner of DFY Links, offers these six expert suggestions:

1. Put the offer/information upfront – the further back in the subject line your offer is, the less chance it has of being read
2. Keep your subject line short – people have short attention spans
3. Give it a sense of urgency – give them a reason to open it now
4. Make it personal – make them think they know you
5. Triple-check your spelling and grammar – no need for explanation here
6. Bonus tip: Be clever – bland and grey never see the light of day

Be consistent, too. Whatever you promise in your subject line should actually exist in the body of your email. Nothing ruins a customer’s trust in a brand faster than feeling tricked. Bait-and-switch marketing may get clicks, but it’s a lot harder to increase conversions when inconsistency, whether intentional or accidental, is putting a dent into your authenticity and authority.

Find Ways to Personalize Every Message

The power of personalization is big to warrant a more in-depth look. Personalized subject lines boost email open rates by 26%, but that’s just the beginning. You can also personalize by targeting emails using information from customer surveys, recommendation purchases based on past buying behavior, highlighting mutual connections (referencing an industry-leading decision-maker, for instance) or simply making an email feel personal by addressing common consumer hurdles or including praise. Specifics are paramount, so use all the information at your disposal to zero in on personal factors that will help your message resonate.

Need help with your email marketing? We can help.

Before You Hit Send…

One of the most important things you can do as a marketer to drive conversions is to A/B test the heck out of your emails to understand exactly what will drive conversions the highest. Digital marketing guru Neil Patel gives some great advice on what you should test and how you should do it.

Although everything from the colors and imagery to the body text and personalization are game for testing, there are a few key things that you must get right to ensure a high conversion rate:

• Subject line (“Free Shipping Ends Tonight” vs “Enjoy Free Shipping”)
• Call to action (“See What’s Inside” vs “Learn Insider Secrets”)
• The offer itself (“Deep Discounts” vs “BOGO”)

Think about what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re seeing dismal open rates, then begin by testing your subject line. To get your conversion rates up, start by testing your calls to action.

Those who use MailChimp or another similar email marketing platforms may find built-in testing tools to help get the job done. If you’re looking for another solution, Hubspot has a great list of A/B testing tools to try. No matter what tool you use, keep in mind that email marketing without testing first is about as effective as throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping something sticks.

When you set up your tests, keep things as subjective as possible. Patel says that you should always use the same list for a test, and if you can’t run the test on the whole list, any subset should be chosen randomly. It’s also imperative that you shouldn’t stagger your test, as you may run up against time-based factors that impact the results.

If you’ve never done any A/B or split testing before, you might want to consider hiring a pro to do it for you if you have the budget. But whatever you do — include testing in your project plan.

Wrapping it Up

At its very heart, a good email boosts results and conversions by addressing your target audience’s pain points and connecting with them. Do that and you’ll achieve the success you crave. I call that a solid day’s work.

The post Email Copywriting: Tips for Mastering a Profitable Niche appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.