Six email newsletter best practices that drive results

Email newsletters may be a great way to stay top of mind and keep in touch, but do your clients or donors really want yet another email in their inbox?

Yes, they do. But to stand out in their crowded inbox, you need to do some of the heavy lifting for them. With the help of Mark Brodsky, owner of MB Digital Communications and Luminate’s trusted email marketing partner, we’ve put together some practical email newsletter tips to help you get noticed.

1. Make sure the ‘from’ name and email are recognizable. The easiest way to get someone to ignore and delete an email is by not clearly showing them who it is from. If you are a mortgage broker, dentist or massage therapist, for example, most people in your database likely know you by name. But individual names at larger organizations are far less recognizable. In these cases, the emails need to come from the organization as a whole. Donors, for example, may open an email from the name MedicAlert Foundation Canada, but they may dismiss the same email that comes from the name of the Executive Director.

2. Have a good great subject line. You only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention. After the sender’s name, the subject line is how to convince people to read on. It needs to be short and to the point—not more than six to 10 words—and it needs to be interesting. Do not include the month or year in the subject line; very few people are enticed to read beyond a subject line that simply says: July Newsletter.

3. Play around with timing. In the old days, and by that we mean 10 years ago, email newsletters had the best open rates if they landed in inboxes during business hours (i.e. when people were at their desk and in front of their computer). Today, reading emails is not restricted to being at a computer so timing is something you can play with to see when you get the best results. Send it at noon on a Tuesday one month and at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday the next month to compare results. However, you want to avoid weekends, as well as the Friday before, or Tuesday after, a long weekend. (Unless of course, you’re a retailer pushing a long weekend sale.)

4. Make sure your email newsletter is mobile friendly. Trend reports have found that at least 50% of emails are opened on mobile devices. It goes without saying that if your email isn’t mobile friendly, it is far more likely to be ignored.

5. Use software designed for email marketing. Software such as Constant Contact or MailChimp are designed to send bulk email to thousands of people at a time. Your personal email account, such as Gmail or Hotmail, is not. Email marketing software also makes it easy to manage your database and ensure that the template you design is exactly what people see regardless of the device they view it on. And, the software takes a deep dive into open rates and click rates so you know exactly what most interested your readers.

6. Keep your email template consistent. Take the time to design a template and (more or less) stick to it. We are all creatures of habit and your readers prefer to know what to expect when they open the email. 

Finally, make sure that everyone knows how often your emails will land in their inbox when they sign up. Nobody likes to be surprised with daily emails when they were expecting monthly ones. 

MB Digital Communications has been helping business owners increase their sales using email marketing and social media since 2008.