3 tips to keep your newsletter out of the bin and boost open rates, engagement, and deliverability.
Thomas Haurum
Are you neglecting email marketing? You’re not alone. Many companies view email marketing as inefficient, outdated, or even useless. As a result, this part of online marketing is often left last and isn’t seriously integrated into the overall strategy.
Why does the impression persist that newsletters are old-fashioned?
Some believe these emails no longer offer good ROI, others see them as a sales channel from the 2000s. It makes some sense if we think of email marketing as belonging to the era of flip phones, low-rise jeans, or before Meta (formerly Facebook) conquered the internet.
Over the last 10 years, platforms like Meta, Instagram, Twitter, and others have exploded, turning from personal networks into global business tools.
For many companies, social media now takes a much bigger share of marketing budgets than newsletters. For clarity, this article does NOT recommend ignoring social media marketing — social media is undoubtedly the gateway to a wide audience and brings valuable data and segmentation. In fact, from September 2017 to October 2018, 320 million new users joined social media.
The main idea: You can reach a wide audience on platforms like Meta, but usually at a high cost and lower ROI. This is where email marketing comes in. It’s important to see these two channels very differently — especially in terms of how users interact, what they expect, and how you communicate via social media versus a newsletter.
So, let’s begin!
On average, email marketing returns a 3,800% ROI (source: Campaign Monitor)! For every $1 spent, you earn $38. It’s the best ROI among traditional marketing channels.
Check out surprising stats here: 70 email marketing statistics you need to know
How does email marketing consistently deliver such good results? One reason: you can send personal and relevant communication directly to your customers’ inboxes. And, most importantly, newsletter subscribers have chosen THEMSELVES to receive this info. They’re already interested in your business, so all you have to do is turn readers into customers.
The first step — get them to open the newsletter! In other words: Be relevant or be deleted. If your newsletter isn’t relevant, it will be instantly deleted or, worse, marked as spam. Emails often marked as spam can hurt your deliverability or — in the worst case — your ROI. Today’s consumers juggle a daily chaos of messages from companies fighting for their attention. So, sending a one-off offer email is no longer enough — the skeptics are right: that type of email marketing really is dead.
You have to work harder to get your newsletters opened, read, and converted.
But let’s start with the most important step — making sure your newsletter is at least opened.
Here are 3 tips to grab attention and stay out of the trash:
Easy: emails with a personalized subject line have a 26% higher open rate than generic ones. Remember that number. Getting +20% results just by adding the recipient’s name in the newsletter subject — it’s worth a try. But make sure it makes sense for the recipient — and when they open the newsletter. The effect is greatest when the offer truly matches their interests and is directly addressed: a special discount, birthday greeting, or reminder for their shopping cart.
Learn more about abandoned cart automation here: Abandoned Cart Automation — Get Maximum Impact!
If you have a large client list, it’s worth segmenting it into smaller groups. You can segment by gender, age, purchase history, etc. — depending on what’s relevant for your business and the data available. 74% of online consumers feel they get irrelevant content — then what happens? Exactly, the email goes straight to the trash or, even worse, spam. If you sell contact lenses, maybe segmenting by gender or age isn’t effective, BUT — segmenting by purchase history works: send reminders to those who haven’t bought in the past 2 months.
As harsh as it sounds, that’s reality. Over half of emails are read on mobile, and half of them are NOT optimized for mobile. That means a huge number of emails worked on but given a maximum of two seconds of attention. You get people to open the newsletter, only to have it deleted instantly. If it’s not mobile-optimized, it’ll be deleted quicker than you can say “ROI.” So, make sure you have a perfect theme for mobile, desktop and tablet.
Those were 3 quick tips to keep your newsletter from getting lost in the crowd and avoid the trash bin. From here, it’s up to you to create content that turns readers into customers. But that’s a story for another time.
Read more about newsletters in these articles:
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