Learn about the importance of setting up a successful monthly newsletter.
Monthly email newsletters remain a key part of an effective marketing strategy. Usually catered to a specific user base of customers who have previously shown interest in your business, these newsletters are designed to build strong relationships with potential clients and grow as your business grows. This doesn’t always work, however, and sometimes a monthly email newsletter campaign can fall flat. This could be for various reasons, let’s look at some of the more common problems and how to solve them.
Content Doesn’t Feel Relevant Enough
Do you know what content your customers want to see? It’s helpful to keep track of the three separate data types to learn more about your audience. Known data comes directly from the subscriber. Asking them bits of info like their name, date of birth, city, or state they live in, or specific topics they are interested in can help you create a clear picture of your audience, allowing you to tailor the content to them more. Then there are behavioral data, which tracks user behavior from your website and emails. The last data type is purchase data, which enables you to keep track of what is purchased by a user, when, how much, the amount of time spent browsing, etc. Use each of these data types to help inform what you’ll include in your monthly newsletters. If you don’t hit customers’ interests as well, you may see your preciously-constructed newsletter end up in a spam folder, and nobody wants that.
Not Understanding The Audience
The failure of the email campaign may be as simple as not fully “getting” your target audience. One way around this is to create profiles for your buyers, with their goals, values, and other personality traits listed so that you know exactly how to cater custom emails to them. You can also segment your email recipients list so that they can choose what information they’d like to receive. Download our helpful template for building your target persona.
Timing Is Off
Timing can be a key factor when sending out email campaigns. Through trial and error, it’s been found that certain weekdays and certain specific hours are more likely to bring people in than others. Through testing, it has been found that Mondays and Fridays are often too busy for business owners, and they are normally not checking emails on the weekends. Try sending newsletters out on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, around noon or in the afternoon. Ultimately, it comes down to testing as every industry is different. Testing different days and times is crucial to find out which time works best. Benchmark email states, “One study has found that if you send newsletters once every week, you’ll get a 30% open rate and 3.63% click-through rates.” What does this mean? The more frequently you send a newsletter, the less likely it will be that your potential customer will open the email and engage.
Could Take a Longer
People are less likely to sit through a long, lengthy email, and more likely to read one that is short and straight to the point, delivering the message in a fraction of the time. Keep your newsletter to around one page, with an average reading time of just under 1 minute. You can also experiment with subject messages and include the company name and other important pieces of data in the subject, headline, and body. Experimenting with custom layouts for the newsletter can also help you figure out how to make it the most visually appealing.
Monthly email newsletters are a very effective way to reach brand new sets of eyes. With low costs and an opportunity to stay top of mind to your customers, email marketing gives your sales team insight into low-hanging fruit and different ways to engage with the sales pipeline.
If you liked this article, read our article on the benefits of a monthly email newsletter.
Learn more about Cultivize, a leader in the email marketing industry.
