6 essential tips for writing the perfect newsletter

Lots of companies have their own email newsletters now, so how do you make your newsletters stand out from the crowd?

What's the key to a successful newsletter, compared to one that just sits in someone's inbox which nobody reads?

Well, here are 6 key tips to consider when writing your newsletters.

Provide content worth reading.

This should be obvious really, but it's surprising the number of newsletters that are sent out that are just a list of adverts.

Nobody watches TV just for the adverts, no matter how entertaining they might be. So, make sure that you are providing some useful and interesting content that your subscribers might actually want to read.

Now, obviously, you'll want to put adverts in your newsletter too. You have to earn a living, after all. But make sure that there is something else to keep your readers interested, even if that just means special offers.

If you can provide tips and advice, or industry news, these are key things that your subscribers may be interested in.

Grab the reader with the headline/subject.

People receive so many newsletters and other emails these days that you need to make sure that your readers want to read your newsletter as soon as they see it. Otherwise they probably won't read it at all.

Your newsletter literally needs to scream "READ ME FIRST".

Not just "Read me at some point".

If your subscribers can see your subject and think "I'll read that later", they won't read it later. 90% of the time, they'll come back to it later after they've received another batch of emails and it'll just get deleted.

Give them a reason to open it and read it straight away.

Establish trust.

Make sure that you are consistent with your newsletters and that your subscribers know what to expect when they open and read your newsletter.

That doesn't mean don't add variety or try new techniques. It just means, make sure that your subscribers don't feel tricked because your subject line bears no resemblence to the content of the newsletter. It means, make sure that your subscribers trust what you have to say and treat you as an authority on your subject.

Write for your audience.

You are an expert in your field, your subscribers probably are not.

This means that you must explain everything in layman's terms and explain any industry terms, abbreviations and acronyms.

We all get used our industry terms and we often forget that others don't automatically understand them too. So be careful and proof read your newsletters looking for any assumed understanding and explain it better.

Keep it short and simple.

People are busy. So make sure that people can get the information they need from your newsletter quickly and easily. So make sure you don't waffle on when you don't need to. It also means, don't cram your newsletters with too much information and too many different articles.

There are lots of companies with grand ideas about running a newsletter and they fill their first edition with 10 different articles and several thousand words.

When it comes to the next edition, they've run out of ideas and can barely manage a couple of articles. It looks too different to the first newsletter so they put it off until they can think of more articles to put in it.

After a couple of months, the impetus disappears and the next edition never happens.

Even if you've thought of lots of articles for your first newsletter, you don't have to put them all in. Hold some back for the next newsletter. The newsletter will be more appealing to your subscribers and you're less likely to get writer's block next time.

Keep them regular.

If people receive your newsletter and it's been so long since they received the last one that they can barely remember you, it's likely to be on the bottom of their reading list.

It's very difficult getting the right frequency so that's it's regular enough that you stay in people's minds, but not so frequent that it just gets annoying.

Somewhere between once a week and once a month is usually considered about right. The exact frequency will need to be down to you to decide what you think your subscribers want.

OpenGlobal offer a newsletter package which is integrated into your website so that visitors can subscribe straight from your website, and you can have a consistent branding across your website and newsletter.

The newlsetter package also give you analytics so you can see how many people opened your newsletter, and exactly which people they were.