Building your brand is an important part of any successful entrepreneur. An email newsletter is a good tool to use. Here are some best practices your small business should follow.

Email Newsletter Best Practices

Tell subscribers what they’ll get

Make sure everyone knows what to expect as soon as they sign up. Tell them the type of content they will receive and when they should expect to see your newsletter in their inbox. This kind of transparency sets a good tone and helps build a good relationship right away.

Design it for mobile

It’s important to keep in mind the importance of mobile for delivering your newsletter to your target market. Reading on a smaller screen is different from reading on the desktop and you should make the necessary changes to optimize your newsletter for smartphones.

Buttons should be nice and big so they’re easy to click, and content should be short and sweet. People read from their smart phones on the go and you should keep that in mind.

Create subject lines that sizzle

People will be waiting for your email newsletter if they’ve signed up, but you can increase open rates by crafting great subject lines. Letting them know they’ll be getting 10 helpful tips on a relevant topic is a great start.

Short and simple is also the way to go here.

Add interesting content

If you have somewhere with your business, you already know what interests your target market. You need to capitalize on this and include interesting content in your newsletter that doesn’t include a lot of hard-to-sell ads.

Emphasizing educational content over sales copy means implementing a 90%/10% split.

Add that personal touch

Chances are that the people you send your newsletter to will delete more emails than they open. Adding a first name to the beginning of your newsletter can make a big difference in increasing your open rates. You should collect them when people first sign up for your newsletter.

Give something special

It’s no secret that you have to be on top of your business game to get people to open your newsletter and read it. Special offers are one of the biggest ways to increase your open rates. These can be coupons or even discounts that are only available to your email subscribers.

Here’s another helpful tip. The special offers you include have more power if you only include them with an email newsletter subscription.

To be coherent

Everyone loves routines and that includes your email newsletter subscribers. That’s why it’s important to make sure you send it out the same day at around the same time so that the people waiting for it aren’t disappointed.

Optimize and test your newsletter

Finding out what works best for your target market is all about tracking and testing different options. It’s a great way to test things like your headers and subject lines.

It can also tell you how you might need to adjust your call to action if that’s what you’re focusing on.

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