7 Steps to creating an email your clients will love

If you are like many small business owners this statement will fill you with an urge to procrastinate or find other tasks to do - “It’s time to write our monthly email newsletter.”

Many business owners create an email newsletters because they have been told that it’s good for their business, but deep down they don’t believe it.  With this attitude it shows in their emails!  If you don’t believe in what you’re doing, your customer can tell and your email subscribers will be less engaged and responsive.

A successful email newsletter requires a shift in thinking.  Your email newsletter is an opportunity to engage with your community.

5 STEPS TO CREATING AN EMAIL YOUR CLIENTS WILL LOVE

1. Use a professional service like ezymsg that is designed to send bulk emails (never send from your own personal account!). The last thing you want to do is get your entire company blacklisted.  
2. Only ever send to people who have requested to receive your email newsletter and make sure you set expectations up front about how often you’ll email (Daily? Monthly? Quarterly? etc).  People want to know what they should expect.
3. It’s not about you.  This is the #1 most important step for a successful email newsletter. Stop thinking about what you want to sell and instead, step into the shoes of your customer.  What are they doing this week?  What problems are they facing that I can help solve?  Your newsletter needs to be relevant and helpful to your customer.  When you get this right and create a useful, relevant email, you’ll see your customers engage with you and even forward it to their friends!
4. Make it scannable.  How much time do you spend reading an email?  Probably only a few seconds before deciding whether to read deeper or hit delete.  Combine this with the fact that up to 50% of people check emails on a mobile device you need to make your emails easy to scan with bold headlines, sections and bullet points.  You can always provide a link back to your latest blog post, rather than including a long article within the email itself.
5. Make it actionable.  Make it easy for your customers to take action on your email newsletter.  What do you want them to do?  Buy something?  Read your blog post?  Forward it to a friend?  Share it on social media?  Decide on the main call to action for your email, and make it easy for them.  Include action phrases like “Click here to read…”  Make sure you link to your call to action several times within the email.  Most people won’t make it through your entire email, so don’t save your call to action until the end.  They may not get that far!
6. Write a good subject line.  Subject lines or headlines are a key part of a successful email campaign.  If you have a boring subject line (“The Month's Newsletter”), your receiver will probably delete the email before they even open it!  It doesn’t matter how fantastic your content is if they’ll never see it.  You can check out our previous blog post on some great subject line starters to cure writers block.
7. DO NOT use "do_not_reply" email addresses.  This basically says to your customer we are happy to stuff emails in your inbox as long as you don't want to email us back.  Emails are designed to start a conversation.  If you don't want any replies then you need to questions why you would email in the first place. 

​
If you approach your email newsletter as a way to show customers how you understand their specific challenges and how you can offer helpful tips, resources and products to overcome them you are sure to see your engagement and responsiveness increase.

Speak to an Expert

30 Day FREE Trial