Can we let you in on a marketing secret? Email newsletters don’t have to be hard or time-consuming.
Between repurposing your own content and curating content from other websites, you can stay top-of-mind for your audience and generate sales with just 30 to 90 minutes of work a week.
In fact, it only takes 4 easy steps to create a successful email newsletter. Rinse and repeat every week, and voila! You have a newsletter.
Ready to learn the surprisingly simple steps to creating your own weekly newsletter?
1. Find your niche.
Before you can create your newsletter, you need to ask yourself: what does your ideal customer want, and how can you give it to them through weekly emails?
The goals of your email newsletter should be to establish your brand as an authority in your field and to generate sales by presenting your readers with compelling offers. Most of your newsletter should consist of free (but valuable) content that educates the reader, not sales promotions.
(Remember the 3 types of emails your business should be sending? Your newsletter will be an educational email with a little bit of promotional content sprinkled in.)
Start brainstorming the kinds of content your potential customers want to see. Funny memes related to your industry? Tips for using your business’s products at home? Insider “hacks” that will save them time and money? Useful blog posts, podcasts, and videos? Inspirational messages and heartwarming stories?
Figure out the kind of content your audience wants to consume, and start curating a “swipe file” to share with your readers.
2. Collect content throughout the week.
After you find your newsletter’s niche, you’re ready to start creating and curating content.
Most of your content doesn’t need to be original to the newsletter. Repurpose old blog posts, educational emails, videos, and informative pages from your website. You can also share content from other sources—just be sure to cite where it comes from.
Here are some ideas for ways to fill your newsletter:
- Helpful tips for getting the best results from your products
- An interesting blog, podcast, or video that your audience will find useful
- Memes related to your industry that gave you a laugh
- A weekly spotlight showcasing a success story from a past customer
- Product recommendations from you or members of your staff
- Inspirational stories or quotes from leaders in your industry
- Throwbacks to old blog posts from your archive
You probably already come across a lot of these pieces of content in your personal social media and inbox. The next time you see a story, meme, or image you think your audience would like, add it to your newsletter swipe file. Over the course of a week, you should collect enough content to fill your newsletter.
Don’t be afraid to mix and match different kinds of content. Your newsletter can contain a little bit of everything: images, video, short form copy, links to longer pieces of copy.
3. Fill an email template with content.
Once you’ve gathered several pieces of interesting content your audience will find valuable, you’re ready to create your newsletter in your email service provider (ESP).
Every ESP is different, and some give you more creative freedom than others. Spend some time experimenting with your ESP to get a feel for what you can do, and try out pre-existing email templates. If you don’t see one you like, you may have to create yours from scratch.
Your template should feature 3 to 7 sections based on the kind of content you collected in Step 2. Maybe you’ll start every newsletter with a YouTube video from your brand’s channel, followed by a podcast recommendation, a relevant meme, and a customer success story.
Need some inspiration? Neville Medhora at Copywriting Course always includes 5 sections in his newsletter, “the the S.T.U.P.I.D. email”: an example from his “swipe file,” an interesting thought or discovery, something uplifting, something interesting, and a drawing from his archives.
Once you find a template you like, keep using it for all future newsletters. This will save you tons of time in the future that you would have spent on email design. The template also gives you direction when you’re not sure what kind of content to look for.
4. Schedule your newsletter.
You’ve collected content your audience wants, you’ve put it in an easy to replicate format, and now you’re ready to schedule your email.
Try to schedule your newsletter for the same time and day every week. Your audience will come to expect your newsletter on a certain day, and you’ll stay top-of-mind when you consistently deliver valuable content to their inboxes.
Most people check their emails between 9am and 3pm, so schedule your emails for the morning or early afternoon. Every audience is different, but in general, earlier emails perform better.
Repeat steps 2 through 4 every week to create a regular email newsletter!
Want hands-on help with email marketing? Maybe you have all the content for a newsletter, but you need help with email design or growing your list. We can do all that and more! Schedule a call, and we’ll talk about the ways Sigl Creative can support your business through email and digital marketing.
