BY LIVIU TANASE, FOUNDER AND CEO OF ZEROBOUNCE, for INC.
More than 4.5 billion people will be using email by 2025, Statista shows. Aside from being the prevalent work and business communication channel, email also offers lucrative marketing potential. So, if you’ve been planning to start an email newsletter, don’t delay. Through email, you’ll forge tremendous connections with your customers and prospects.
But before you begin, here are a few things to keep in mind so you can be efficient and see results quickly.
Choose your niche-;and stick to it
One thing you must decide from the beginning is your content strategy. To find the right approach, think about your niche as an anchor for creating helpful content. For instance, if you run a public relations (PR) company and your expertise lies in beauty and lifestyle PR, stick to emails that provide relevant info on these topics. That’s how you’ll build a vibrant, engaged audience that is likely to convert down the road.
Reassess and clean your email list
Do you have an email list that you’ve been growing through the years? You’re already steps ahead of others who are just starting. However, before you send your first newsletter, validate all your contacts to ensure they’re still active. “We verified more than six billion email addresses last year, and 20 percent of them were invalid,” says ZeroBounce Chief Operating Officer Brian Minick. “Email databases degrade fast, with obsolete addresses leading to high bounce rates and emails going to spam. That’s not where you want to be when you start an email newsletter.”
Automation saves at least 30 percent of your time
Writing and creating a newsletter can take hours, and that deters many companies from starting one. If the work seems daunting, remember there are many aspects of your email marketing you can automate. “We ran a study and found that most businesses spend about 150 minutes daily managing their email marketing. When they use automation, that time goes down to 104 minutes, which is 30 percent less,” says Mailbird’s Operations Manager Christin Baumgarten.
You can automate welcome emails, birthday, and anniversaries emails, and many aspects of your newsletter, like your template creation. “If you use an AI email writer, you can end up saving 60 percent of your time without compromising quality and email performance,” the email pro adds.
Monitor your metrics from the start
Monitoring your newsletter metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates from the outset is crucial. By analyzing this data, you can gain valuable insights into subscriber behavior and continuously improve your newsletter strategy.
Email marketing expert Vicky Smith of Flic Email confirms. “When I recently started a weekly newsletter for a client, I conducted tests with different send times to determine the optimal timing for our target audience. My analysis revealed that sending the newsletter on Thursdays at 8:00 am resulted in a 4 percent higher open rate and a 1.5 percent higher click-through rate compared to the other two send times. This specific send time also generated significantly more sales.”
So, pay attention to these metrics so you can make data-driven decisions. What works for other companies may not work for yours, so keep a close eye on your audience. That way, you’ll maximize the effectiveness of your email newsletter and achieve better engagement and results.
