Newsletter is the ultimate secret to making email marketing campaigns successful. It is important to keep subscribers engaged with brand-new projects while it also contributes to communicating all the sorts of news surrounding your company.

When you regularly send a newsletter to inform your audience about what is going on in your business, you can nurture every contact in your email list as they advance in the sales funnel. You can bring up:

• tips;
• news;
• information about services and products;
• projects for the future;
• and more.

As long as you have a clear objective in mind, a newsletter works effectively in email marketing campaigns. This content will teach all that you need to know about the newsletter and how to use it.

If you have not worked with newsletters yet, we will give you reasons why you should, how to start, and how to better explore this marketing tool.

What is a newsletter?

Sending a newsletter to your audience with regularity is an initiative that can boost your ROI when backed by a powerful and structured objective.

For example, you usually spend many weeks planning and developing a new product. It takes a lot of time to do so, right?

Will people buy it if they can’t understand how to use it, its purposes, applicabilities, and features? Probably not. However, if you send some newsletters, a few weeks before its release, people will likely be interested in buying it when you finally put it out in the world. 

A newsletter plus strategies and planning make all the difference in the return of investments. This insight is very valuable, especially if you are a new marketer. You can explore this suggestion when you start an email marketing campaign. 

A newsletter is an instrument that can be used to share relevant, interesting, and useful information with a certain network of buyers, prospective clients, and subscribers.

Speaking about the structure of newsletters, they are usually composed of short text messages and images to illustrate them.

Besides sharing content, a newsletter can be employed to make you keep in touch with your audience, as an open channel of communication with customers. They can be used to collect feedback, impressions, and suggestions.

Furthermore, marketers usually struggle with defining a topic to build a newsletter from scratch. Undoubtedly, the creative process can be tricky and it consumes many hours a day. There are some cool ideas for newsletters that you can share such as:

• content from your blog: pick the most read article on your blog to execute a roundup of content, sharing their preview through newsletters, which will increase traffic to your site;
• industry news: share everything that is going on in the industry with your audience. Informing and educating is good to make you get authority in your field of work, and it is also well-perceived by your audience;
• testimonials of cases of success and satisfied customers: companies create products and services to solve the problems and pains of someone else. When these people share their stories about how effective your brand was in providing solutions for an undesired situation, you can sell more.
• promotional sales: in order to be successful, promotional sales must be widely advertised. When you plan this kind of initiative, use newsletters combined with powerful Call to Action buttons to spread your special prices and exclusive limited deals. 

These are a few options to help you in the creative process. Thus, a newsletter is a perfect way to build and maintain a solid relationship with subscribers.

What is the purpose of a newsletter?

Newsletter is usually used by business owners, who have websites, blogs, or an e-commerce channel, to advertise products and services in the form of content.

For instance, they can let subscribers know about an event that you are organizing or holding, as well as be a tool to engage inactive users in remarketing campaigns (such as advertising products to customers that have abandoned their carts).

Moreover, a newsletter can have different purposes, depending on the project and company involved. 

Overall, they have, as the main goal, the desire to promote a product or a service offered by companies, while they create a point of reference with your mailing listings.

We can mention other purposes of newsletters, such as:

• engage and communicate with your target audience on a regular basis;
• make subscribers remember your brand;
• release brand-new information about products or news in general;
• make the number of new visitors increase;
• encourage your audience to visit your platforms, such as your website or blog;
• attracting daily traffic.

They also aim at:

• improving open and click-through rates;
• prospecting new customers;
• raising awareness of your brand;
• building long-lasting relationships with your clients;
• gaining more conversions.

How do newsletters work?

Newsletter is basically an email sent to your contacts, with the intent to inform everyone about news concerning your company and projects. It works under a previously set frequency (such as daily, weekly, monthly, or other forms of periodicity).

Messages sent in the form of a newsletter must be informative and it has to be interesting to your audience. 

If it is not compelling to your subscribers, they won’t open it. Having this in mind, it must be carefully planned and written by specialists in your marketing team.

It doesn’t mean it is complex to elaborate on. Just that there are a few things you should be aware of when you are planning a marketing campaign driven by a newsletter.

The first thing to think about is related to the way the messages are going to land in real mailboxes. You must be recognized as a legitimate sender by ISPs (Internet Service Providers), as well as have a respectful online reputation, so you can eliminate any deliverability issues.

And to do that, you must focus on authentication standards (setting up SPF records is perfect to authorize and authenticate email services to send messages on your behalf), managing email lists, and creating high-quality content.

This way, your marketing team has to count on a fully functional and operational ESP (Email Service Provider), which has to be able to:

• send emails in bulk without hurting your deliverability;
• provide templates of newsletters, making the creation process faster;
• managing your email lists according to the security guidelines and current legislation;
• send mass emails without the risk of putting your reputation in danger;
• register marketing KPIs and metrics to further analysis of results and performance;
• help with the newsletter content, headlines, subject, layout, and Call to Action buttons.

These are some of the features that you should pay attention to when you are choosing an email service tool. After all, if your newsletters are not delivered, there is no point in creating them. An email checker tool, such as SafetyMails, will help you to verify and validate email addresses is also recommendable to make your marketing campaigns based on newsletters effective.

The importance of newsletters for email marketing?

The best part of the newsletter is that it provides direct access to your subscribers’ mailboxes. This is a huge benefit that can be explored in planning marketing campaigns, research analysis, and A/B tests.

It’s also possible to use a newsletter to segment and organize your audience, making your company connect with people in a personal approach. When you build solid relationships with your subscribers, they become advocates for your brand. This is insanely beneficial to all businesses.

These are some of the benefits that only a newsletter can achieve. Social media alone can’t be used to approach subscribers and followers that closely. As people come and go on social media platforms, a newsletter provides you with email addresses that are here to stay, at least for a little while. 

Nurturing your subscribers through a newsletter can be very rewarding. Keep reading to check some of the benefits that the newsletter might bring to your company.

Newsletters can make your company known

People spend many hours a day checking emails, especially on weekdays. If you have adequate deliverability, people will eventually receive your messages.

Through a targeted and well-planned newsletter, you have the perfect chance to present not only your brand, but your whole portfolio of products and services of your expertise.

Use newsletters to let people know everything about your company while you build a relationship based on trust with your target audience. Day in and day out, curiosity will evolve into interest and this, in turn, will become purchases.

Do your part by protecting your deliverability and creating interesting content.

Newsletters are ideal to advertise new products 

Newsletters are great to advertise your new project. You can create content to be delivered by mail, with links to newly designed landing pages, which are advertising new items and initiatives.

This way, you can have more conversions, hence, more purchases. When your marketing campaigns are carefully planned, newsletters can potentialize your results.

During holiday sales, such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, or release periods, a newsletter is the most powerful tool to advertise specific products

Newsletters excel at educating your audience

Some companies don’t sell only products. They provide life experiences and valuable knowledge. However, it’s very difficult to make a new lead believe in this idea. The first thing to do in this case is to educate your audience, especially newcomers.

They must understand what exactly you are offering before accepting. Gradually, newsletter by newsletter, they will become more conscious about what makes you stand out from your peers in the market.

When they get to the level of awareness that differentiates value from price, the newsletters have done their job. Whenever you feel the urge to educate your audience about your business or field of work, a newsletter is the best option for you.

Newsletters can increase website traffic

You should use a newsletter to invite recipients to complete the desired action, usually explicit in the Call to Action (CTA) button. When you combine CTA buttons with your website and landing pages, you can lead subscribers to your online platforms, boosting your traffic.

For example, if your marketing team has just published a new article on the company’s blog, people will not read it if they are unaware of this new publication. However, if you approach your subscribers by mail, through a newsletter, which brings a preview of this article, many of them will click on the CTA button and read the text.

It works like this. You can also encourage your audience to share your content with someone who might be interested in it. This way, you can drive even more traffic to your channels.

In short, a newsletter is efficacious, affordable, accessible, and can be personalized according to the different groups of your audience. It’s a must-have tool in email marketing campaigns.

How to use a newsletter to bring results to marketing

People who are currently receiving your newsletter are located in the middle of the sales funnel. They were stimulated enough to subscribe to your channel of communications, but they haven’t purchased an item yet.

This is an essential insight to have in order to explore the possibilities of newsletters for marketing purposes. Now, your goal is to turn these brand-new customers into paying clients.

You can use a newsletter to achieve this conversion. For example, when readers open your message, they have to be driven to your website or landing pages. This way, a newsletter can help you keep or increase the online flux on your main website. 

Learn how to use the email marketing metrics to know how successful your marketing newsletter campaigns are.

Designing your newsletter according to this specific goal, with attention to Call to Action phrases, will increase your results.

Talking about results, your performance must be studied after a campaign is carried out. Metrics help you understand what went as planned and the points of attention in your strategies. For instance, sending a newsletter regularly is a great way to track:

• Bounce and Deliverability Rates;
• List Growth;
• Open Rate;
• Click-through Rates. 

These metrics give you valuable information about your reputation as a sender, while they measure the engagement your messages can generate.

Investing in productive strategies and learning from mistakes are the initiatives that make companies grow. So, if you want your marketing campaigns to be successful, consider the sales funnel and the journey of subscribers on your platforms.

Finally, study the accomplished results to improve future strategies, adapting them according to your audience’s response.

Why is managing your email list essential for your newsletters?

Maintaining a healthy email list is extremely important to make the most of a newsletter. Unfortunately, marketers usually overlook email list management because they prioritize quantity over quality.

This is a mistake that you must avoid. Quality matters way more than quantity when we speak of email marketing. This can be explained with only one word: engagement.

If you have a list full of inactive or fake email addresses, there is no point in sending them emails, since these messages won’t be opened. You really should put all your effort into active and responsive subscribers.

The response you get from your messages is what matters when you want to build a solid reputation and improve your deliverability. When you get no response at all, the ISPs start doubting your legitimacy. In a short time, your messages stop being delivered as intended. 

Taking care of your deliverability is the same as taking care of your reputation. That’s why managing email lists is essential for a newsletter. There are some practices you should consider adopting to manage your mailing listings, such as:

• Opt-in your mail lists to get the users’ consent to send newsletters to their mailboxes;
• let the user decide the frequency of the newsletters;
• give the users the choices of the topics they want to see in a newsletter (sales promotions, news of the company, educational articles, info about services and products, and so on);
• send personalized content;
• segment your lists according to relevant groups, such as age, location, topics of interest, the progress of the sales funnel, and so on;
• make the unsubscribing process easy, quick, and intuitive;
• regularly, organize re-engagement campaigns before removing inactive users;
• validate your email lists using an email checker service.

These are some positive actions to take in order to manage your email lists. When you put such tips into practice, you will be able to experience growth in engagement during email campaigns with a focus on a newsletter.

You can start by verifying and validating your subscriber lists, aiming at removing inactive emails and other kinds of addresses that can hurt your deliverability.

Creating more engaged newsletters: a few tips

If you got to this point, it means you know everything you should about a newsletter. You are ready to put theory into practice. But, before you do that, we have some tips to share, so you can highlight even more your email marketing campaigns, using newsletters.

• Don’t be too long: newsletters don’t have a fixed size. However, research suggests that 20 lines of text are enough (or at most 200 words). When you want to share longer content, use your blog. What you can do in this case is to share a preview of it in newsletters.

• Be interesting, relevant, updated, and valuable: a newsletter has to approach topics that your subscribers care about. They should be delightful, light, and informative too. Finally, your content must offer something unique and useful to subscribers, something that only your company can offer.
• Be focused on your readers: know who you are writing for. If you have doubts about it, it’s time to rethink your strategies. The focus should always be on your readers.
• Be organized to create groups within your audience: understanding that your audience is composed of different groups is a necessary approach when dealing with mailing lists. You can’t elaborate on one piece of content and send it to everyone on your list. This will only result in spam complaints and unsubscribing requests. Personalized content is the strategy you must adopt when planning newsletters.
• Be simple and direct to the point: many marketers fail at newsletters strategy because they try to do everything at once. Mailboxes are places for quick and digestible daily communication. A newsletter should have this same mindset. The simpler, the better.
• Use social media to share newsletters’ previews: social media is the place to go when you want to build some buzz surrounding certain topics. You can explore this feature to advertise newsletters. Social media can be explored to make people excited for your next newsletters.
• Try to keep up with the news: your newsletter should focus on what is going on at the moment in the world, especially the events that have any impact on your field of work. It brings attention to your brand.
• Switch the focus from your company to the people who are behind it: adding some humanness is great for a newsletter. You can think of content that embeds relevant topics for your community, and comments by the company’s team to give a human touch to online exchanges.

Creating an email newsletter is more than writing some empty lines. Making someone open emails is a true challenge, especially if there is a marketing purpose for them. 

The challenge starts with the creation process. It is intensified when it leaves the internal servers to reach real mailboxes. It escalates when it lands in different mailboxes. But it is overcome when someone opens it.

If you learn “What is a newsletter” and want to start a brand-new email marketing campaign with a focus on it, the first thing you should do is check email addresses. Learn everything about it.