Email newsletters are a great way to control a narrative about your business and its story. The alternatives are that customers find out about you from third parties, through the filters of bias, competition and negative news; that they stumble upon you from a search; or that they don’t hear from you at all.
But the most powerful function of a newsletter is to grow your readership and, in the knowledge that a certain percentage of your readers will become customers, growing your sales too.
That’s the easy bit covered. But achieving this goal of subscriber growth is a slightly harder thing to do. That’s why we’ve got a few hacks for you to keep those numbers on the up and up.
1. Don’t stress about unsubscribes
Once your circulation reaches a certain size, you’ll notice there will be unsubscribers almost every time you send out an email. That’s completely normal – sometimes they’ll have subscribed by accident, other times they’ll be doing a spring clean of their inbox, and there will always be those who’ve changed jobs or moved house and the email will no longer be relevant.
Pay attention to subscribers, but you don’t have to worry about every one. It’s net growth you’re after, so unless you’re hemorrhaging readers, you’re probably doing nothing wrong.
2. Open all channels
It’s normal to have a “subscribe” form on your “contact us” page, but is that enough? You can have subtle pop-ups, mentions in your copy or a permanent header or footer inviting visitors to subscribe. But that’s just the start of it – don’t forget social media, videos, flyers, brochures, business cards and other channels to push your newsletter.
3. Make content shareable
Imagine if you could create content so good that some of your readers actually forwarded it to friends and colleagues. With your finger on the pulse of your readers, great email body presentation, an interesting or expert angle and sharp copywriting, you can win new subscribers organically.
Don’t rule out incentives for forwarding emails, either, whether that’s prize draws, exclusive offers or other perks. And make sure you include a “forward” button that makes it easy to pass it on.
4. Be considerate
Don’t flood people’s overstuffed inboxes with emails. Before you click send, think about how you would feel if you received the email you’re writing – would it actually be of interest or use?
The impact of a single email will be greater if it’s just at that sweet spot between rarity and regularity, and you can glean this from your analytics. Sure, if you’ve promised a daily newsletter, honour that expectation, but there’s nothing wrong with remaining silent if you;ve got nothing to say.
5. Make some content exclusive
A final way to get more subscribers is to offer certain online content to subscribers only (perhaps at least for a few days or weeks before open release). It’s particularly effective for reports, white papers and important industry news that can’t be found elsewhere.
Subscribers not only know that they can access that particular content, but also that they’ll be alerted to future exclusives. In some industries, such access is highly valued.
Of course, with all this considered, you also have to make sure your email templates are well designed, perform perfectly on all devices and operating systems, and give you maximum flexibility while staying on-brand. And that’s why you need our HTML email design service.
