Newsletter Best Practices

Why Newsletters are important

Sending regular newsletter email campaigns helps to build a relationship with your audience and keeps you top of mind. When you get in the practice of sending newsletters to your customers and prospects you are prepping them to care about your updates, promotions or product launches on a regular basis. It’s an opportunity to give them key business information without coming across as pushy or too sales focused. 

Setting up a successful Newsletter campaign

To make sure your newsletter is read and ultimately has an impact on your business you need to ensure the content is relevant, the layout is clean, and the message is focused. Below are some tips on setting up your newsletter.  

• Find your voice: People subscribed to your newsletter because they like your brand or products and want to hear more from you. However your newsletter has to have a focus and a purpose. It should bring value to your users in the form of content and promotions. Consistently present your information and give it a balance so it’s not 100% focused on promotions or sales.  
• Determine your timing: You never want to overwhelm your customers with too many emails, so it’s important to time your delivery for when you have enough valuable content to send. It’s common to send weekly or monthly depending on your business goals. You also need to coordinate your newsletter with any of your other promotional emails so they don’t overlap and you maximize the impact and open rates of all your email communications. Pay close attention to the data (open, click, conversion, and spam rates) and test different sending times and dates. Then, make adjustments as needed to optimize your results.
• Establish a clear call-to-action: A call to action (CTA) is copy that directs your customers to take the next step (e.g. make a purchase, sign-up, visit your site). An effective CTA lets your customers know the purpose of your message and guides them to the next phase of the customer journey. A CTA should be concise and clearly highlighted in the newsletter so customers know exactly what to do when they open the email. It’s good to use specific action-oriented CTA text like the following examples:  
  

  • Buy Now

    Download

    Sign-up

    Get the latest news

    Visit our Site

    Tip: When designing your email, remember to place your CTA button above the fold so that your readers never miss it. 

• Find your layout: To ensure your email newsletter design works across devices, check how your design looks on mobile and desktop. AdRoll allows you to easily ensure mobile responsiveness by clicking preview while building your email. A general rule is that a single column newsletter works better on mobile. Multi-column newsletters may not cleanly fit on all mobile devices.
  
  
  

• Build your Brand: A well-designed newsletter becomes an extension of your brand. How you organize the content, use colors, images and fonts will determine if the customer views your message as valuable. To help you get the most out of your layout below are a few design tips.  
• Keep the layout consistent: Newsletters should have a consistent layout so your customers can easily find the information they’re looking for. Establish a few core templates and use the same layout for all your regular communications. 
• Highlight your brand assets: Make sure your brand colors, logos and fonts are consistent with what your customers see on your website and in other marketing materials. The goal should be to register instant brand recognition and eliminate any confusion or jarring experiences between the newsletter and the landing page.  
• Don’t clutter: Your customers are busy and likely looking at your email while on the move. The majority of emails are now opened on mobile devices. This means smaller screens and less space to view the message you’re sending. Make sure the most important information is prioritized at the top of the email and don’t make the email too long — avoid sending an endless scroll of copy.