Many companies and brands routinely create helpful and informative content…which then just sits on a website, hidden away on a page that takes too many clicks to find.

Marketers who want to get the most out of their content, including blog posts, need to take full advantage of their thought leadership by getting it in front of the right audience at the right time. Otherwise, he stays out of sight, out of mind.

How can marketers improve content engagement and views? Email newsletters.

Distributing your thought leadership, and content in general, via email newsletters has a significant impact on readers: it improves brand exposure and increases spokesperson awareness. Not to mention that newsletter subscribers interact more with the brand.

As a result, every company, from major news publications to D2C brands to martech vendors, is offering subscribers personalized newsletter content. Consider the following statistics:

• Newsletters have an average open rate of 22%, compared to a fraction of that for audience/ad interactions on Facebook.
• Visitors to the Greentech Media newsletter spend 80% more time on the site than visitors to other channels.
• Vox newsletter readers spend an average of 110 seconds on the site, compared to just 40 seconds for Facebook visitors.
• New York Times visitors are 2x more likely to become paid subscribers if they first subscribe to a Times newsletter.

Newsletters: the cornerstone of your messaging strategy

Newsletters are the cornerstone of a successful emailing strategy because they build trust between your subscribers.

But brands can’t just throw content links in an email and hope subscribers will understand. They won’t. Instead, marketers should make the newsletter enjoyable and engaging, using a more conversational tone with subscribers.

Emails bombard us all daily, and they have done so especially in the past couple of years. Increasing competition for subscriber attention requires a response and adjustment from marketers hoping to get the most out of content and blogs.

For example, at Litmus, the effectiveness of one of our most successful newsletters, Litmus Weekly, suddenly declined in 2020. Open rates and click-to-open rates plummeted. He didn’t drive the traffic he once did.

Because 54% of companies increased their email volume, we could have attributed it to increased competition at all levels and changed nothing. But we made some changes:

• Optimized the reading experience by creatively encouraging readers to scroll through the all newsletter
• Injected our newsletter with heightened personality and corporate narrative/voice
• Included the to the right the content of the newsletter, no all of this one

Now the metrics have risen back to previous levels and improved from pre-pandemic numbers.

How can you implement changes and improve your newsletter and content statistics?

Email Best Practices for Optimizing Newsletters

Newsletters certainly differ from other emails, such as abandoned cart alerts or brand awareness campaigns. Each pursues a different goal. But many of the best practices remain the same: make a human connection; offer relevant information, content and messages; and ensuring proper design techniques.

Here’s how to adopt them best practices for newsletters.

1. Connect with your followers

As with other campaigns, a primary goal of the newsletter is to connect with a target audience – a simple, but often elusive goal.

To be able to establish a connection, you must understand what your subscribers expect from you and what you expect from them. To get the most out of newsletters:

• Identify your main goal and create content to achieve it. Newsletters can achieve a variety of goals or outcomes: driving website traffic, increasing app usage, and more. Choosing a main objective increases the likelihood that you will achieve it. This also helps ensure that only one call to action is used; using more than one creates confusion and dilutes the results.
• Set expectations upfront. Let subscribers know what to expect (type of content, frequency, etc.) when they sign up for your newsletter via a welcome email. Also helpful: Immediately offer something of value, like an “exclusive” report or a free trial.
• Keep your send time consistent. Subscribers need to know when to expect your newsletter. For example, our monthly newsletter is published on the last Tuesday of each month. If you are unsure of the right day and time to send your newsletter, test it. Send it on different days and see which generates the best engagement.

2. Offer relevant information, content and messages

Putting on-brand, on-point, and relevant content in your newsletters might seem like the obvious thing to do, but many marketers throw random links and graphics into an email to take up space and appear informative. . Avoid this kind of mess. Instead of…

• Ensure a good balance between educational and promotional material by offering different types of content to encourage engagement.
• Give your subscribers context on what to expect if they click, instead of using call-to-action buttons or phrases like “learn more.” It also makes your email accessible to subscribers using a screen reader.
• Provide stakeholders with an easy way to subscribe to the newsletter and unsubscribe if needed. Otherwise, newsletters can be marked as spam, which harms the deliverability and reputation of your emails.
• Ask subscribers what content they want, if you’re not sure. But, most importantly, make it easy for them to provide feedback or they won’t. Something as simple as a poll at the bottom of a newsletter works wonders.

3. Ensure a more enjoyable reading experience with best design practices

Make newsletters easy to read and pleasing to subscribers, and do it with these creative, design-oriented tips:

• Newsletters need a sense of content hierarchy and demarcated sections to make the newsletter easily scannable. Use titles and CTA buttons that stand out and grab readers’ attention. Also, make friends with white space. Using it effectively makes even the busiest newsletter easier to digest.
• Include different types of images. Leverage artwork, stock photography, and animated GIFs to visually engage followers as they scroll.
• Keep your overall newsletter size under 102KB, especially if you have a high percentage of Gmail subscribers. Anything over 102KB is cut off in Gmail and may show less than half of the email.
• If it matches your brand, look and feel, use bright colors.

B2B brands tend to be less creative with newsletters, but that’s not necessarily the case.

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Marketers spend a lot of time, money, and resources creating content. Don’t let it get lost. Use the power of emails, and newsletters in particular, to increase content awareness while driving traffic and engagement.

More resources on email newsletter best practices

Building your email newsletter is a marathon, not a sprint

How to Create an Email Newsletter People Will Clear Their Calendars to Read [B2B Forum]

Putting the ‘letter’ back in the ‘newsletter’: Ann Handley on writing about marketing intelligence [Podcast]