Piper Blog

Writing a newsletter can be just a time consuming as maintaining a blog. It’s also just as challenging - you have to give your reader value, behave sociably, try not to sell forcefully and on top of all that, you have to be interesting.

That’s no small feat.

This list details some important things to remember when you’re writing your newsletter.

Give readers news

Your recipient has signed up to receive a newsletter, not to receive mountains of promotional copy. Don’t abuse their trust in your brand by spamming them silly, you’ll never win them back.

Of course your newsletter can contain marketing, but it also needs to give the recipient value. Offer industry news, views and analysis, give them discounts, link to blog posts and include interesting things that are relevant to your sector.

It’s a good idea to sign up to your competitors newsletters too, so that you can see the kinds of subjects they are covering and keep ahead.

Test your message

Don’t just spray and pray, run tests of your email before you send it. By sending test groups different versions of your newsletter, you can dramatically increase open and click through rates by refining your copy. Same goes for subject lines.

Be realistic

If you have grand plans to send out a newsletter every week or more, then you need an appropriately sized team to write it, test it, analyse it and make it a success.

It’s also important to be realistic about how many emails your recipients will be happy to get. Perhaps city investors will be happy to receive a daily newsletter, but foodies signed up to a supermarket newsletter will only want an email every week at the most. Send too many and you’ll become a spammer, no matter how fantastic the content.

Target your readers

What do you know about your recipients? If you just have their email addresses then there isn’t much you can do, but if you know things such as their age, sex, family status etc, then you can really target your content.

Writing different content for different groups is more time consuming, but it’s also more effective.

Make it easy to opt out

The difference between your newsletter and spam is that you are email by consent. The only way to maintain that consent is by making it easy for them to opt out - and trusting decent content to make sure they don’t.

Always include an easy-to-find ‘unsubscribe’ button and don’t make them jump through hoops to get themselves off your list.

Thanks for reading!

Natalie Fuller
Production Manager


Inspired by: econsultancy.com