Magic mirror in my hand, who makes the prettiest newsletters? My Queen, your newsletters are the best: compelling and responsive, and they convert like crazy.
OK, you might need more reliable means of analyzing your email’s performance. Have you ever thought about what your actual customers really think about your newsletters? It’s more challenging than being stuck in the fantasy world. Discover true feelings of your customers!
“What’s that?”
Your average customer gets 150 – 300 emails daily and has attention span of 8 seconds. Given that information overload and the speed of processing it, no wonder that your recipient assesses your message instantly to learn whether there is something for her.
Increase efficiency of your markting action 2 to 5 times.
Download our free ebook and develop a professional Buyer Persona.
Clear subject: Say what you have to offer in the subject line. Don’t be vague and avoid tricks (they work only till you’re marked as spam). Respect your readers’ time.
Sender’s name: Your company is not the center of the whole universe. (Take time to process that news) The customers might simply forget what you offer – and if they can’t recall it, they won’t bother trying to find out. The real employee’s name works well as it gives a human touch to the newsletter, making user know what you offer is more important. Does you sender’s name give a distinct notion of that?
“What’s in it for me?”
Egoism? Pragmatism? The end of Western civilization? Call it whatever you please, but know that when people see a message, they just ask one question: “What’s in it for me?” Good offer is not enough: customers don’t care about some abstract or general benefits. They want benefits for themselves.
Personalize: Tap into users’ interests, analyze their behavior and use that knowledge to tailor content, form and frequency of your messages to particular users. Personalization means creating relevant offers: ones that people find helpful for them in a given moment.
Monitor: to understand your customers, analytics is vital, as well as a/b testing. Why? Because both methods give you an insight into actual customers’ behavior and decisions, not into declarations, which tend to differ from reality. That’s why listening to what your users say explicitly (e.g. in surveys or social media) must be enriched with behavioral data.
Deliver valuable content: newsletters don’t only sell, they also build a relationship and help customer see you as an expert in a field. It’s a great educational medium – you can develop customer’s expertize, what will help them make further shopping decisions. When you deliver something like that your recipients want to read your newsletters, they wait for them. That’s an amazing asset for your business. Content is still the king!
“Ouch, that’s ugly!”
There are many types of ugly. Ugly can sell when it’s functional, intuitive and familiar (yes, not changing your design for a decade can pay off!). We would call that “OK ugly” type. But there is also a second kind of ugly: chaotic, repulsive unfriendly and inefficient. We won’t even give it a name, because you should go and do something about it right now.
Mobile: stop me if you’ve heard it, but half of the emails are opened on mobile devices. Without responsive design you lose 50% of your customers before they even get a chance to learn what you have for them.
How it looks without images? Check that always before sending. Many users block images, so be sure that you’ve done your best to convince them to see your whole creation.
Function first: when it comes to web design, pretty isn’t always the best solution. The most important thing is function: your website or message should be crystal clear about the goal it aims at. Visual orgy comes after that.
“So what?”
You offer a discount or have written a great and useful article, that’s great, but what your reader should do about it?
Direct CTA: Say what you want your reader to do. Use a verb: “Buy”, “Shop”, or “Read”.
Don’t make them think! If there is a choice that can be removed, remove it. If something can be said in a simpler, shorter way, go ahead. Get rid of crossroads and obstacles on user’s path.
Create landing pages: linking to your home page or to a catalogue with thousands of products won’t work. User should be transferred to the landing page, where she is told directly what to do and why (what will she get in return, how will it help her). Any other page than landing increases the risk that user will start to wander around and get distracted, or abandon the page after not having found what she’s been looking for.
“I can’t see it, because it came to my spam folder”
Nobody will see it. Even if you prepare a Mona Lisa of newsletters with a Sistine Chapel of subject lines, nobody will see it in the spam folder. Solve deliverability issues first.
High standards: read our post devoted to spam problem to learn how to prevent your mailings from landing in spam folder and what practices to avoid.
Use analytics: know how many of your contact open your messages and what is your usual unsubscription rate.
Scrub your base clean on regular basis: don’t keep contacts who don’t respond. Choose quality over quantity.
Quick tips: create newsletters customers will love!
- Personalize communication. Use Marketing Automation software to create messages tailored to individual user’s needs and interests
- Are batch emails evil? No! It’s natural that you have news you want to share with your whole database. But supplement it with dynamic 1-to-1 emails and segmentation to make your customers feel deeply understood and treated individually.
- Create landing pages. Without them you lose a lot of potential buyers who are simply too lazy to browse your website by themselves.
- Speak directly. Don’t make your customers guess what you mean. Don’t try to be subtle. Say what you want customer to do and how they’ll benefit from that.
Follow
