Email Newsletters: 6 Tips To Get Your Email Newsletters Opened, Read, And Acted On

Having a list of email address of people who want to hear from you is gold.

The secret to effective email newsletters is to mimic a one-to-one email conversation as closely as possible.

Any elements that make the recipient suspect that your message is one-to-many will reduce the impact of your message.

There are 6 questions you can ask yourself.

1. Is your “from” address a real person?

You probably have a full email box right now, right?

How do you prioritise what to read first?

Does the following order look familiar?

1. Email from people you know
2. Email from people you don’t know yet
3. Email newsletters
4. Spam

Almost all email newsletters sit at priority #3 and so they never get read.

The secret is to move your newsletter into priority #1.

The first step to doing that is to ensure your “from” address for your email newsletters is a real person.

• Not “office@xyzcompany.co.nz”
• Not “admin@”
• Not “info@”
• And definitely never “noreply@” (that is the worst of all)

Make it a real person.

Preferably you.

2. Will your Subject Line attract a click?

Have you ever received an email newsletters with the subject line “November 2014 Update from xyz company”.

Did you feel the pressure to open it up immediately?

No, of course you didn’t.

A subject line like that just screams non-urgent. It can be safely archived or delayed until later (or never opened).

Pick one item from the things you want to say and use the benefits of that item in your subject line.

Just like the headline for this post: “Email Newsletters: 6 Tips To Get Your Automated Emails Opened, Read, And Acted On” you know what you’re going to get before you click on it, and your curiosity is peaqued.

Much better than “November 2014 Newsletter” don’t you think?

3. Which is better: designed or plain text?

Commonly, email newsletters are designed with these elements:

• A colour scheme
• A graphic header with your logo
• 1 or 2 columns of content
• Imagery/photos etc

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Using these elements screams “this is not urgent, read it later!”.

To move your newsletters into priority #1 in your recipients inbox you need to mimic a one-to-one email conversation and that means you need to use plain text.

So stick to one item of news per email, or if you must say more, use sub-headings and numbered lists and bullet points to make it easy to skim read.

Personalise the emails too with the persons first name (my record is 7 times in one email).

All email clients like MailChimp, Aweber, iContact let you personalise the body in this way.

4. What action do you want them to take?

If you can’t answer this question, don’t even bother starting to write your next newsletter.

The action you choose has a huge impact on what you write.

For example, if you want old clients to call you with new business, then end your email with a question like “What do you think Jim? Shall we sit down next week to figure it out together?”

Then, if you know that’s your goal, you know your challenge is to write content that is persuasive and valuable and keeps them reading right until the end.

If you approach it from the angle “what do I have to say?” then you’re bound to go in the wrong direction.

Sometimes a softer approach is better than a hard-sell. I often use “what do you think?” as my last sentence.  In that case, the action I want is for them to click “reply” and write a few sentences back to me answering a question I’ve posed.

5. Does your email signature make it easy?

Your regular emails have an email signature, so your newsletters should to.

Include all your phone numbers and details so it’s easy for them to contact you.

They can hit “reply” and email you straight back, or pick up the phone and call, or walk down the road and visit you.

Make yourself seem approachable.

6. Can they unsubscribe easily?

Ensure you make the unsubscribe link easy to find.

If you make it hard for them to unsubscribe:

• They will resent you for sending information to them they don’t get value from
• They will mark your messages as SPAM to get them out of their way (which ruins your email deliverability over time)
• You will waste money sending your messages to people who don’t want them
• You will falsely inflate the number of subscribers you have (A lower number motivates you to increase it. A higher number makes you lazy)

Video Of These Email Tips

I presented this list of email tips at a seminar recently. Here’s the video of that session.

What do you think?

Have your say in the comments below.