13 "Golden" Rules for the Perfect Email

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Suddenly, you are the one chosen to do this task. And don't forget, the number of views and CTR should not decrease! Sounds fun, right?

I was in a similar situation, and at first I had no idea what to do. Even if newsletters are one of the most common types of emails for mailings, in reality they are the most difficult to make perfect. Such a letter includes several types of texts at once about different aspects of your company's life:

event reminders,
research,
articles about your product, service or area of ​​your activity,
promotions, etc.
The point is that such a letter does not have a single purpose, for israel phone numbers example, to describe one promotion, one digest, attract a potential client or tell about the work of the company's website. Electronic newsletters are a much more complex mechanism with several purposes at once, but they should encourage clients to call or write to you.

…But that doesn’t mean you can’t launch a newsletter. If done correctly, it can actually build your subscriber base to turn them into potential customers and buyers in the future.

If you want to launch a better email newsletter project or “revive” an old newsletter, then as an experienced marketer, I am ready to share 10 tips.

1. Do you even need an e-newsletter?
I know it's scary to disagree with your boss about a project that's been assigned to you, but if an email newsletter isn't right for your company, don't waste your time.

To understand if you need it, ask yourself the following questions:

In your field, are there any successful newsletters that people happily subscribe to?
What are they about?
Given your resources (budget, time, and internal support), could you launch a similarly successful newsletter?
Next, examine your company's goals. Are they aimed at increasing the number of potential customers? If the prospect is specifically prepared for the conversation, will he or she communicate with sales managers? Will the newsletter close more deals? And retain more customers?

If your company isn't interested in sending out email newsletters, or you don't have any special software to send them, you might want to reconsider. If your goals don't align with what a newsletter can do, wouldn't your time be better spent setting up emails that will attract potential customers? Maybe...

But let's say you find that it's worth implementing an email newsletter. What do you do next?

Don't waste your advertising budget
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2. Decide what kind of newsletters you want to send
One of the biggest problems with newsletters is that they are “cluttered” and “unfocused” because they report everything at once. Product news sits alongside PR stories, blog posts sit alongside the occasional event of the week, and so on. It’s a mess. An email, whether a newsletter or any other, needs to have something in common that ties everything together. To do this, you can stick to one specific topic in your newsletter.

So, instead of dedicating your letter only to the company, write about something else that is thematically related and interesting.

For example, if HubSpot sent out an email newsletter, it would be exclusively about social media for businesses. The email could pull together recent blog posts on social media marketing, events social media marketers should attend, and maybe a quiz on the best social media tools for you. That would be a much more engaging email newsletter.

3. Your email newsletter should be 90% educational and 10% promotional.
There is always hope that your subscribers are happy, constantly reading information about your products and services. But before they get bored and start ignoring you, make more “baits” for them in your newsletter.


I recently saw this first-hand with a simple example. It happened to Ginny Soskei, Hubspot. She was looking for shoes and she liked one site in particular. She signed up for their mailing list and they started sending her 2-3 emails a day about buying, buying, buying…! And now, when she sees the sender’s name in her inbox, she wants to scream. Now, she says, if they had sent her some educational content, like about the latest fashion styles or how to pair a particular shoe style with a certain outfit, she would have bought something from them or at least started opening their emails.

So get rid of the self-promotion and focus on educational and timely information.

4. Write on the subscription page what your newsletter is about
Once you've figured out the purpose of your newsletter and the specifics of the content, make sure you're properly communicating your company's message on your subscriber's landing page.

Be specific: Tell potential subscribers exactly what will be in the email newsletter and how often the newsletter will arrive. For the subscriber, this is the best option. They open the email knowing exactly who it is from, what the company will send, and how often. For the marketer, having this information will help reduce the unsubscribe rate and the likelihood that the email will be marked as spam.

5. Add creativity to your email subject line
I am convinced that even if many people subscribe to your newsletter, there is no guarantee that they will open your letter as soon as it arrives in their inbox. Often, marketers try to capture the attention of subscribers by sending the same subject line every day, week or month.

But as practice shows, such subject lines quickly become outdated for subscribers. Why? Because they do not provide an incentive to click on this particular email right now! Instead, come up with different creative and attractive subject lines for each newsletter you send.

6. Choose one call to action
What makes a newsletter a newsletter is the different types of messages with different calls to action. But that doesn't mean they all have to be the same!

Instead, make one of the calls to action the main one, the so-called “boss” of the newsletter. Choose one main call to action that you want your subscribers to perform. Write the rest in the style of “do it if you have time.” It’s quite easy to follow the advertising link to see the publication of the post or just forward the letter to a friend. This way, your subscribers will easily know what exactly you want from them!

7. Keep the design and copy as simple as possible
As I wrote before, it is easy to overload and ruin a newsletter. But marketers or email managers need to keep the newsletter organized! This depends on concise copy and enough white space in the design.

Concise copy is key, you don't really want your subscribers to be stuck reading your email every day. They need to be directed somewhere else, like your website or blog, to read the full story there. And the copy gives your subscribers a taste of the story so they'll want to click through and learn more.

A white background in a newsletter is simply necessary because it helps to see a clear picture of the newsletter. And on a mobile phone it is much easier to open the desired link.

8. Make sure your images have alt text
Since visual content is incredibly important to your marketing efforts, it's understandable why you should include images in every email you send.

It seems logical - you just need to add more images, but emails are much trickier. Few people like to activate the function to show all images, so you need to be sure that they have alt text. Alt text appears when images do not load in the email. This is especially important if your calls to action are located on them - you need to be sure that your link will be opened even if the image does not load.

No two email marketing campaigns are the same, but the instructions for adding alt text to your email are always the same and should be kept in mind.

9. Tag all links from the letter with UTM tags
The texts are written, the images are added, all that's left is to work with the links. Any marketer always needs to know how many users clicked on a particular link and went to the site, which is very useful when analyzing traffic. To do this, I'll tell you a little marketing secret - use UTM tags.

UTM tags (Urchin Tracking Module) are tags that are added to addresses and transmit all information about link clicks to analytics tools.

They are easy to work with and will do you a great service! This way you will know exactly which email was the most popular and which link was clicked on most often and taken to your site.

10. Use a separate phone number for mailings
At the end of each month, I always provide my boss with a report in which I indicate all the information on traffic, visitor behavior, and also write how effective this or that advertising campaign was, and how many potential clients each of them brought. As you understand, I need to be able to analyze the effectiveness of each email newsletter. How can I do this? It's simple. In the letter, I always indicate the unique phone number of the company, through which all calls for this newsletter can be tracked. This method is called Call tracking.

In the settings of the UIS virtual PBX , I select a unique phone number and place it in the email newsletter. Then the reports of this service indicate the total number of calls made, targeted calls from visitors interested in buying my company's product, and non-targeted calls from those who are unlikely to buy anything from us. Agree, it is convenient for traffic analysis.

11. Use a good mailing service
As practice shows, the simpler and easier the mailing is, the faster you will send out newsletters. There are many services that will help automate it. These are Smartrespoder, Subscribe, UniSender, Pechkin-mail, and many others. I will not dwell on any one in particular, here the choice is rather determined by your own preferences, the number of letters sent out, and the desire or unwillingness to pay for a mailing service.

Another tip to help a marketer: to attract potential customers, don’t forget about automated personalized SMS and voice mailings, this will also increase your chances of increasing sales.

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12. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe
This may seem counterintuitive, but it’s the key to keeping your subscriber list active and engaging. Don’t use vague phrases like “Change how you communicate with us.” Don’t hide the “Unsubscribe” button behind an image with no alt text. A simple unsubscribe mechanism not only keeps your subscriber list healthy, but it will help ensure that your email doesn’t get marked as spam before it hits your subscribers’ inboxes.

13. Test, test and test again!
I know, I just listed 12 things to try to make sure you’re doing your newsletter right. But you also need to find what works best for your company and your subscribers. Every subscriber group has their own preferences.

Use these methods as a starting point and experiment to come up with your own newsletter “recipe”! A/B test subject lines, change calls to action, or try not including images in your emails!

Have you ever launched a successful email newsletter? What are your tips or tricks? Share them in the comments.