25 Ways to Create and Test Email Newsletters

Posted on June 19th, 2015 by Quertime Writer in Email

There are several ways of indirect marketing. From sending leaflets to sending newspapers and newsletters to customers and users who have subscribed to a certain service or a company, these have been some of the more traditional concepts of keeping the public updated with the latest news. In the world of technology and modern day internet, there are some new and automated ways to execute the same concept of sending newsletters and leaflets. These are called e-newsletters or e-leaflets and even electronic newspapers. Usually companies and agencies send such newsletters to the public through their email or correspondence addresses, which not only makes them personal, but also very direct.

When working on electronic and email based newsletters, it is very important for a company to ensure that the users are targeted on two levels. The first is to address them on a personal level, which means if you are sending something to the email inbox of a user, then it has to be a problem-solving solution to the user’s problem or something that will personally attract them. For example, if you know your users are looking for cheap electronic equipment or some sort of special discounts on particular services and this edition of your newsletter is promoting that, then you can send those to your users who are interested.

The second thing to consider while sending electronic newsletters is the fact that everything you send is credible and your users are not annoyed by it. This can be ensured by promoting your service in a subtle way, asking the permission of users to subscribe to the editions of newsletters and maybe giving them an option to unsubscribe if they are annoyed. Usually marketers and organizations make some silly mistakes and which is why their newsletters often fail to get the desired attention from users. Today’s guest post will be talking about 25 amazing ways through which companies can work on their e-newsletters and test them in the most effective manner.

1. Research around
You can have newsletters of all kinds and family. A good idea is to find your niche by researching a bit about your field of interest.

2. Understand your own niche strength
Every newsletter has strength, you should work towards having one unique aspect about your newsletter that makes it different and strong.

3. Understanding your target audience
In order to have great or successful newsletter campaigns, having the right understanding of your target audience is very important.

4. Knowing their behaviors
Knowing the behaviors of your target audience, for example, what they like to read, what they like to purchase, etc., can also help you tailor your design accordingly.

5. Understand their problems
The second important highlight of your newsletter creation should be to understand the problems your target audience is facing, be it technology related or health related.

6. Providing them with the right information
Like we said earlier, newsletters are personal and people look forward to them to find something they are expecting. It is the responsibility of the sender to learn and forecast their expectations and manage that. Your first aim for an e-newsletter should be to provide information.

7. Your messages should be comprehensive
Provide as comprehensive information as you can about the important factors related to your company or brands you are offering. This information can help your user understand and judge you in terms of how important you are to them, so the more compelling your information is, the better.

8. Giving them exactly what they need
Once you know your customer’s profile and problems, then it is time to give them exactly what they are looking for.

9. Work on the aesthetics part
Some people think it is the content that matters, but aesthetics also play a crucial role in the attraction of your newsletter.

10. Get a content which is appealing
After making your aesthetics seem perfect, then comes the turn for the content. Get a specialist magazine content writer, so that you can have the most appealing content written.

11. Develop a trust with your audience
Newsletters are sometimes very personal, so a connection with the audience can always help in a long term. So try to connect and develop a trust with your audience towards the initial stages of your publications.

12. Expand your reach
As you gain confidence with your publications and acceptability, in order to grow big, it is time to expand your reach to other locations and consumer profiles.

13. Lose the desperation
Sometimes newsletters become too desperate and try to offer too much in terms of sale, this not only puts a consumer off because of too much bargain and offers, but also decreases the standard of your newsletter by making it look like a discounted sales magazine.

14. Keep it brief and simple
An average user will spend a maximum of 50 seconds to a minute in deciding whether your newsletter email is worth spending time or sending into the trash folder. So giving a cluttered and confusing information that is difficult to digest and understand is a bad idea. Always look to keep your newsletter brief, clean and very simple.

15. Be reliable
Sometimes in order to gain attention and get the much needed clicks, the newsletters tend to offer something which is just to get them on board while the actual reality is something else. Avoid such tricks, because you will not only lose the customer forever, but your reliability and credibility will also suffer. It is also important to be consistent with your newsletters.

16. Being consistent
Another crucial factor in your newsletter design is to remain consistent with whatever you do. If you tailor your newsletter around the best deals in town, then stick to that.

17. Advertise
Work on selling yourself. A good advertising campaign highlighting the aspects and offers of your newsletter becomes important after you reach a certain point.

18. Quality control
Ensure that your content and feel of the newspaper on its 100th edition is better and evolved as compared to its 1st edition, but one part which makes it unique should always be the same.

19. Respond and offer customer service
The customer service again is also a very important tool for newsletters, through customer services you can offer consumers a different version of your newsletters, answer their queries about certain things and be in touch with them to find out their needs and behaviors through surveys and different kinds of forums.

Testing your newsletters

20. Sampling
The first step to having a good test out of your newsletter design is to sample it. Select a sample size from within your targeted market and circulate a copy to them.

21. Survey and gather data
Surveying about your newsletters, is also a good idea to test out its efficiency and success. You can design a short survey online for people who read your newsletters and also for those who avoid it.

22. Giving a call to action
When you give a call to action to your target audience, your greatest way to evaluate the success rate is to see if you have met the target of people coming towards the action that you have advertised. For example, an action here could be a long term subscription.

23. Interviewing people
Featuring interviews of the people who are your long term subscribers is another good highlight to test out your newsletters.

24. Testimonials
You can also invite your customers to leave out testimonials for you, this can act as a good evaluation and testing point where you compare the complaints against the positive reviews.

25. Ask people to blog
Asking people to write reviews and blog about your product, is another modern way of evaluating and testing your newsletters.

Author: Michael Clarkson

Michael Clarkson is the author of this guest post. Michael works as a newspaper editor in a top agency in the U.S.A. He has high interests in talking about his work, he also takes interest to give assistance and assignment help for those students who asks for it.