I. How to work with newsletter
"What can I gain?" "Why should I care about this?"
These and similar questions are in the minds of all people who have just opened their inbox and are looking at all the emails they had received. When looking at the list of new emails they wonder which emails they should be concerned with and which are not important. If they can see the email brings them something that they are interested in, they will open it and read it. They might even click the link to your web and buy, register or do some other action that the newsletter encouraged them to do. This deciding process only lasts a few seconds and that is why it is so important to make sure your emails draw attention and do not end up in the bin.
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The first tip and key on "How to work with newsletter" so that it succeeds is to send the right information to the right people at the right moment.
This is of course easier said than done. Let’s take a look at how to find this perfect situation or at least come close to it.
II. How to work with newsletter
"Who are the right people for my newsletter?"
The time when everything was sent to everyone is gone. Why? The answer is very simple. Take a look at your email inbox. The amount of emails that all of us get every day is so big that we simply do not have the time to look at all of them. That is why whenever you open your inbox, you quickly go through what you had received, delete all unimportant emails and only look at the emails that "survived the purge".
If you send uninteresting emails to people that do not care about their contents, there is a very small chance they will ever open and read your newsletter. Your potential customers will likely be interested in something else than customers that you’ve been working with for some time. That is why you should create a chart and insert contact group names into the first column. The contacts should be first divided into current and potential customers. The next division of the current customers could be based on what products or services they have already bought from you. You can also separate them based on what marketing potential they have, or what other products or services could be useful for them. You can create as many groups as you want. From my experience, I would recommend against creating excessively detailed groups because they cannot be used effectively – it is likely possible you won’t be able to create so many different newsletter emails.
If you have your emails sorted into the right groups, it is time to take a look at what these groups are interested in and what you should send to them.
Try to create newsletter in Quanda
III. How to work with newsletter
Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash
"Sale! Discount! Sale! Discount! Why doesn´t it work?"
We can find the first part of the answer in the first paragraph. Not everything is interesting for everyone. The second part of the answer can be found in our content – in whatever it is that we send to people. Even the best sale or discount offered on a product I don’t need or a product I have already bought cannot persuade me to purchase it. Have you ever been in a situation where you bought something in an online shop and then got emails that were connected to the range of products of the shop you have just purchased from? Or you maybe bought a ticket and now you get the same emails with slightly different graphics offering you flights to European metropolises for a discounted price? No matter how often or where you fly, you get emails for discounted tickets every week.
If newsletter becomes only a product advertisement that offers more and more sales and discounts, you will soon get bored of these emails and you will unsubscribe.
IV. How to work with newsletter
What to do then? Sell or not sell?
Try to go through the emails that you get and think about which emails you delete and which you read. Emails that are just an advertisement usually end up in the bin as first. But not all of them, right? Emails that bring something interesting that you care about right at this moment have a bigger chance of staying. What is the key to success then?
Let’s go back to the example with tickets. I have two small children and when me and my wife first flew with them it was quite a haste. Where to put the stroller, the milk bottle, what can I or cannot I bring to the plane and so on. I couldn’t have known but you know how it goes. Someone studies all this beforehand and someone, just like us, does it then and there. At last, everything was simpler than it seemed, and everything went smoothly and comfortably. Why am I writing about this? The flying company that sold us the tickets has the information about when we fly many weeks beforehand. Instead of sending me emails with discounted tickets every week, they should have sent us information about how to comfortably get through clearance with children, where, when and to whom give the stroller to and so on. They knew we would be taking a bus in London to get from one airport to another, so we would appreciate a map of the airport with information about the bus stop that we were supposed to go to. If I received emails like these, do you think I would delete them? No. I would keep them and maybe even forward them to friends that were flying with us. And if I received an offer with other flights after emails like these, would I look through them after having positive experience with the previous emails? Yes. I probably wouldn’t accept their offer, but I would read through it because I got useful and interesting information from this company beforehand.
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The second key and tip to success with newsletter is to keep the reader’s attention and make them open any further emails they receive from you.
V. How to work with newsletter
Create a simple plan about what you are going to send
The more you know about the contacts in your database, the more exact your communication can be. The more you know, the easier you will find content that will interest your contacts. In my example about tickets, we could see that even from one purchase the flying company can get to know my age, if I have children, how many of us are travelling and where to. Thanks to all this information, they can create content that is connected to travelling with children, information about international flights and changes, information about getting through clearance with children and so on. There are many options. Will the information be valuable to only me? I don’t think so. On the contrary, I think this information would interest anyone who travels with children. If the company put all this information together, they could use it for a long time and send it to many customers that would appreciate all this information. And if they needed to update some information it would be quick and easy. Would these emails help create a better relationship between the customer and the company? Definitely. Will I gain more trust in this flying company that isn’t only interested in selling me more tickets? Yes, definitely. And where there’s trust, there is business.
Let’s go back to the chart you have started creating. In the first column there are the contact groups. Now write the numbers of weeks into the following columns. You will start to get a simple plan of communication that will help you keep everything under control. This plan should be created at least for 3 months, so 12 weeks beforehand. The groups you sorted your contacts into are in the first column. In the following columns there are the numbers of weeks. Now write information about content that you want to send into the individual fields. You should be alright with one or two emails in 14 days. Don’t forget business emails that should also appear in this plan. Sending emails too often is the same mistake as not sending them frequently. You have to experiment a bit and find the right frequency for yourself. There aren’t any rules on how many emails you should send. And that brings us to the third key to successful newsletter.
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The third key and tip to success at creating newsletter is a regular and long-term communication combining something useful with business emails.
Looking at this plan you can see you own a tool to help you manage your email communication with various contact groups. And thanks to "no selling" useful content you can catch people’s attention. You will need it so the recipients will also open your "selling" emails that you send them.
This plan can also show you what contents you’re missing so you can prepare it in time. I recommend engaging more people in creating content, if you have someone available, so that not everything is resting on your shoulders. If you are alone, plan the time when you can write regularly. Maybe you’ll start liking it and you will start writing not only for newsletter.
Try to create newsletter in Quanda
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Good luck!
Jan Spáčil