Creating an Email Newsletter That SELLS

Lately, many of my customers have been asking me to help them find solid, low cost ways to promote their products and Web sites.  Typically, I say that newsletter is a great idea.  Most people who have an online presence know that an email newsletter is an indispensable tool for promoting their businesses.  Since I have been in the Web industry, however, I have subscribed to countless newsletters, some I wanted to try on my own, others because I purchased a product or clicked a “learn more’ button.  All of them were eventually removed from my inbox.  It took me nearly a decade, but last week I found a newsletter that DIRECTLY addresses my business needs, one that I will actually open and read, and that will very likely prompt me to make purchases as well.

I wondered, what is the difference between this newsletter and the hundreds of others that I’ve tried and dismissed?  I decided to do some research of my own and come up with tips for creating an email newsletter that SELLS.

Target, Target, Target
One of the key things about the newsletter I’m discussing is that it VERY tightly targets its market – that is, me, or more accurately, HTML/CSS developers and implementers.  Every single article had to do with that specific area of Web development.  There were no articles about Flash, or Internet marketing, or typography.  While I do help customers out in these areas, this newsletter focused on the core of what I do.  To me, that was more valuable than newsletters with skewed focus on the more general topic of Web design.

In developing your newsletter, you will need to use traditional marketing techniques to focus in on exactly who your main target consists of and what benefit they would get from a newsletter.  What will prevent them from clicking that “unsubscribe” link?  Can your newsletter provide so much value to them that they will continue to read it and use your product and services?  This is by far your most important step in the process, and it will affect all the other processes in creating your newsletter.

Enticing Titles and Teasers
The newsletter I mentioned had a very key characteristic: each section article had a title that enticed me to read further and was followed by a short teaser with more detail on techniques.  One title example is:

“Developing Rapid Prototypes for Testing”

As you can see, this is not a generic “how to work faster”, but a highly relevant topic about streamlining my day to day processes.  That is the kind of article that is focused on saving me time and money, and better serving my customers.  Finally, an article that gets my attention!

What titles and concepts would your target market find absolutely irresistible to click?  Whatever your field, your newsletter should be addressing ways to make their life easier, their work more productive, or their free time more pleasurable or relaxing.

Layout
There is a great debate about HTML vs. text newsletters, but the fact is that you need to know your audience.  I’ve gotten lots of wonderful text newsletters, but frankly I can’t stand them and I never read them.  I am not a huge fan of reading on my PC, never have been, and reading globs of unformatted text is a nuisance to me.  Another pet peeve is scrolling through long articles to get to the next one.

Receiving newsletters in HTML format is my preference.  It does really depend on your audience: one can reasonably expect that emails sent to Web developers could be set up in HTML format only.  There is somewhat of a risk factor, though, and the integrity of your design matters a great deal.  Using both HTML and text is preferred if you are not sure.

Either way, layout is critical.  You can really think of your HTML emails exactly like Web pages.  You would want to use small chunks of data to drive your audience to do something.  Usually, a newsletter will drive the client to the page on your Web site with a more complete article.  Keeping teasers in and full stories out accomplishes several things:

  1. it leaves more room for ads or product placement in your newsletter,
  2. readers do not have to wade through long columns of content they are not interested in, and
  3. most importantly, it drives people to your site.

Getting newsletter readers onto your Web site is going to help drive sales.

Design
Next we come to design.  HTML newsletters should be simple enough to convert to text newsletters, if necessary.  Even if you choose to distribute only HTML newsletters, if the design is heavily driven by images people with images disabled in their email program will get a page of ugly red “x” marks.  This is not the place to stretch your graphic design muscle.  I’d say a good rule of thumb is to allow your newsletter to somewhat mimic your site or logo, so that it is familiar to readers. 

Keeping design to a minimum will allow you to create titles and links that stand out and create separate sections for topics.  It also means that if you have products, they are more likely to stand out and will not be lost in a sea of images. You might want to use borders or pale background colors to do so.  Text should be the right size and font style to read easily.  The rules of HTML newsletter design shadow the rules of good Web design, only more so: Keep it simple, focus your audience where you want to lead them, and make content clear and concise.

Ad Placement
It’s a good idea to put any ads for your products or services near relevant articles.  If I’m reading an enticing header and teaser about style sheets, and directly next to the article is an ad for a product that will help me develop style sheets faster, I’m far more likely to click it.  If there is a time-sensitive sale or promotion, those odds go up.  However, if this article or ad were about services that are not my core offerings, I’d be far LESS likely to either read or click.  Again, that tight audience targeting comes is required to really drive people to make a purchase or get to your Web site.

To sum up, it’s not easy to create a relevant, concise, readable newsletter that will bring more people to your Web site.  It takes research, planning, design, and creativity.  You may need to conduct studies.  Put out a few newsletters and see what kinds of responses you get.  It is, in effect, an entire marketing effort of its own and it deserves that kind of attention.  Like all marketing, what you put in will determine how much you get out of it.

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