Email newsletters are hard to get right. Many businesses look at them with the “everything but the kitchen sink” mentality, pouring way too much into them. The most effective newsletters aren’t like that however. The best ones are tight, focused, and encourage the customer to take an action.

When done correctly, newsletters are an excellent way to promote your business and engage with customers. Here’s a few ways you can perfect yours.

Don’t go overboard

Attention spans are short. Keep that in mind when designing your newsletter.

The best newsletters don’t drag on too long. Resist the urge to dump everything you’ve got into this one piece of content. I understand that you’ve got special events, deals, blowouts, and announcements galore to share. Save it. The last thing you want to do to your newsletter is kill it with clutter.

Keep it focused

What’s your objective with this newsletter? What is the intended action that you’d like the customer to take? This is your CTA – your call-to-action.

Your entire newsletter should be built around your CTA, which should be blatantly obvious to anyone reading. Don’t muddle things up by including more than one CTA. That’ll just dilute the message. It’s better to pick one and stick to it.

Give it a hook

What’s the most appealing thing about your newsletter? Is it a special? A new item? An exclusive coupon? Keep those in mind when writing your subject line, and designing your newsletter layout.

When it comes to developing a newsletter, your first goal is to get your emails read. This makes the subject line incredibly crucial. There are many different strategies for writing an effective subject line.

Depending on the content of your newsletter, you may have to get creative. For example, if the main selling point is an exclusive $5 coupon that you’re sending out to subscribers, then you’ve got an easy subject line. “Get $5 Off Your Next Purchase!” Practically writes itself.

On the other hand, your newsletter might be promoting your store’s new inventory. A lot of effective subject lines work by posing a question to the audience. “Have you seen our new Fall lineup?” for example.

Imagery

Imagery is important. A dull newsletter with a wall of text won’t be very effective. If you have written content to share (i.e. blogs, etc.), your subscribers would be better directed to your website. For the purpose of your newsletter, focus on including vibrant imagery and maintaining good use of white space.

Get some inspiration

At the end of the day, one of the best ways to learn about developing a quality newsletter is simply by looking at what other companies are doing.

If you’re like me, your Gmail “Promotions” tab probably has more emails than you’d reasonably plan on reading. (And if you’re not like me, go sign up for a few newsletters. You can always unsubscribe later). Scroll through them and click on the ones that stick out to you. Look at how they’re designed, what the CTA is, and try to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Promote With CoGoBuzz

Now that you know what a quality newsletter looks like, let’s start building your customer network. With CoGoBuzz, we’ll empower your existing CRM and Email Marketing accounts with industry-leading technology. Our service leverages your in-business WiFi to collect profile information from guests via Facebook, Email Address, or Phone Number logins. We’ll store customer profiles and automatically integrate them with your Marketing List of choice, including HubSpot, MailChimp, and Constant Contact.

Check out the rest of our website to learn more about CoGoBuzz!

What’s your business’s newsletter look like? Let us know in the comments!