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Engage your family members, shareholders and/or board members around your newsletter by following these ten simple tips.
First of all you have to define clear goals for your newsletter. Why do you need one? What do you want to achieve? Once your goals are clear you can start the writing, and here are a few tips to help you with that.
1. Start with a good title
When sending a newsletter the first thing you want is for people to read it. It might sound obvious but you must keep it in mind at all times.
The subject of your email is the first thing people will see and you want them to want to click.
Even though it is necessary to mention it for later referencing, “Newsletter March 2019” is not very catchy. What you want to do is try to spike an interest around the title. Give your readers a little teaser of what is inside your newsletter.
2. Stick to your graphic chart
Design has now proven its astronomical impact on businesses. Your graphic chart is the identity of your company and it needs to stay consistent. If each and every one of your newsletter integrates a new graphic element, different colours, different fonts or patterns, your company image will suffer. It might not be directly conscious but people will feel your company is inconstant, unpredictable and at last unstable.
For the same reasons try to stick with one layout, header and structure, that you can adapt through small touches.
3. Do not use images for important information
Better a plain text newsletter than too many images.
Images are supposed to complement what you are saying. Many people open their emails on the go, a newsletter could be the perfect five minutes read for their morning commute which means they will open it on their smartphones.
Not only text-images potentially take forever to load if your connexion is not the best but they limit the responsiveness of your design.
On the left you can see that the structure between desktop and mobile display changed to improve readability. On the right, the text, being contained in the images, got smaller and harder to read.
4. Avoid awkward office photo stock
To continue on the images topic, avoid impersonal photo stock. We have all seen the “handshake” or “business meeting” photographs a thousand times, on a thousand different websites. If you want to reinforce your company’s personality and improve its image, take your own pictures. Smartphones nowadays have amazing camera quality! Improvise a casual photoshoot in your next meeting. It is cost efficient and will make a tremendous difference for your readers who will feel closer to you and your company values.
But be careful, accessible and fun should not mean quality loss! Watch out for your pictures composition, lighting and general quality so they do not feel cheap.
5. Keep it short
It’s all in the title!
6. Make it clickable
A great way to keep it short is to use hyperlinks. Make your newsletter clickable so people can choose which content they do or do not want to read. See it as an online newspaper, you do not want to scroll through all the articles to get to the one that interests you the most.
7. Create additional value for your readers
For a few years now, marketing has taken a new direction. We are drifting away from outbound techniques (when the company initiates the conversation and sends its message out to an audience) in direction of inbound (where the customers find you when they need you.) A growing number of companies are now prioritising a content strategy to generate leads.
So more than ever is time to enrich your newsletter with valuable content that does not explicitly promote your brand but is intended to stimulate interest in your company, products or services.
8. Internal Newsletter? Add some personality
Your employees are the first ambassadors of your brand. An engaged and happy coworker can benefit to your company image more than a good customer review. Your members need to feel included. When communicating with them through your newsletter do not hesitate to add some personality!
- Fun fact
Tell a fun fact about you. It can be about anything, the company’s creation, the building, the founders. It can take many forms, a picture of the first office, your first logo or website. Help your board members and/or family members become part of your company’s story.
- Miscellaneous content
Even if it is not corporate news, it is important to share what’s up. Highlight the people working at the company, they deserve to be in the spotlight too!
One of your board members and/or family members has crazy hobbies, won a contest, spoke at a conference, went on a business trip, had a special thing happening in his life or at work? Share it!
- Ever thought of a figure section?
Share some numbers to show progress and keep people excited. How many new clients this month? How many new followers on social media? It is rewarding and highly motivational to feel that you are part of something great.
9. Quality over quantity
Do not overuse newsletters, nobody likes to be spammed. All our mailboxes are already blowing from junk emails, do not add yours to the list. Set up a calendar and be regular: Once a month or once every two weeks is enough. Once a week is okay only if you are sure about the quality of your content.
10. Last but not least...
Keep in mind that it is not an exact science. What works for some companies might not work for yours. Experiment, try new things and analyse the collected data to see how your readers respond to it. The key data you need to look for? Number of opened emails, number of clicks and number of unsubscriptions.