10 Email Newsletter Best Practices: Must Know Tips

3.5.2023
Read time: 13 min
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10 Email Newsletter Best Practices: Must Know Tips
Try Publicate For Free Today
02.03.2022
Read time: 13 min

Crafting and executing an effective email newsletter strategy is a must-have for all kinds of businesses. With engaging newsletters, you are able to maintain direct contact with your customers and employees, while keeping them up to date on business news. At the same time, you benefit by driving more conversions through personalized content.

If you’re looking to get started with a successful email newsletter, it’s definitely worth your time to keep reading our top tips for email newsletter best practices.

Guide Index

What is an Email Newsletter?

Email newsletters are an invaluable communication tool that can help you and your business to easily and consistently reach your customers or followers. Not only do email newsletters help foster meaningful relationships with your contacts, but they also drive website traffic while reinforcing your company's brand messaging.

Furthermore, employee email newsletters offer you a great internal communications channel to keep your staff up-to-date on the latest news, events and updates within your organization. To ensure that your email campaigns have maximum engagement and positive impact, it is important to follow these email newsletter best practices – read on for more information!

Why is an Email Newsletter Important?

Email newsletters are an important asset for businesses, they can help maintain close relationships with their audience and help keep the business at the forefront of customers’ minds.

Through regular communication filled with valuable content and updates, companies can increase visibility, drive web traffic and conversions - all creating tremendous value in return!

Moreover, the best newsletters foster customer loyalty which leads to increased retention. In short: email newsletters are an invaluable marketing tool that helps your companies or organization to achieve greater success on many levels.

What to Include in an Email Newsletter?

If you’re writing your own email newsletter, you want to ensure that it generates sufficient engagement. It is essential to create a harmonious blend of engaging content, visuals, and a clear call-to-action.

Craft captivating headlines which help grab the reader's attention while also providing relevant information targeting their interests. Include visual elements like pictures or videos in order to offer an enhanced reading experience for users.

Don't forget to include sharing buttons so readers can spread the info with just one click! End each newsletter with appropriate CTAs steering users towards desired actions; make sure you also include an unsubscribe link to maintain regulatory compliance.

We’ll get more in depth with what to include in the next section with our email newsletter best practices.

What are Email Newsletter Best Practices?

Crafting a successful email newsletter campaign doesn't have to be daunting–it's actually quite simple if you follow these best practices. Let’s take a look at ten essential strategies to get started on the path towards an effective, engaging newsletter!

1. Focus on a Clear and Engaging Subject Line

Crafting the perfect subject line for your email newsletter can be a huge factor in determining its success. Your subscribers need to know what they'll find inside when opening it, so keep them focused and relevant while remaining brief.

Choose language that's engaging yet accurate – this will help capture attention & spark interest leading to greater engagement with your content!

2. Use Mobile-Friendly Design

With the majority of emails being opened on mobile devices these days, making sure your email newsletter is optimized for those screens should be an essential part of any business's online marketing strategy.

Responsive design enables readers to enjoy a smooth and user-friendly experience regardless if they're reading from their phone or tablet – with no distorted images, illegible text, or messy formatting in sight!

After all: why limit yourself to just computer viewers when you could maximize reach with responsive design? Email newsletter builders can be a great tool to achieve this as their customizable and pre-built templates are already optimized and tested for all devices.

Mobile phone applications including the Mail app showing notification for new emails
Picture from Pexels

3. Personalize Your Content

Connect with your audience on a deeper level by personalizing your email newsletters.

Segmentation helps you achieve this, breaking down subscribers into smaller groups based upon their interests, behaviors or demographics - and crafting content to suit those individual needs makes it much more engaging for readers!

This means your readers will be far more likely to open the emails they receive from you – resulting in higher engagement or click-through rates.

4. Maintain a Consistent Sending Schedule

Maintaining a consistent sending schedule for your newsletter will establish expectations and increase engagement with your subscribers. Being consistency is key for internal newsletter best practices.

Choose a frequency that works best for your audience and content, ensuring that your newsletter arrives in their inbox on a regular basis. This will build anticipation and familiarity, making it more likely that subscribers will open and interact with your newsletter.

Finding the right balance is vital, as sending emails too frequently can be overwhelming and cause subscribers to unsubscribe or complain, while not sending often enough may result in readers forgetting about your newsletter altogether.

5. Test and Optimize Your Emails

Tap into the full potential of your email newsletter by testing and optimizing it! A/B testing allows you to trial-and-error different aspects such as subject lines, layouts or content.

This typically means that a portion of your audience will receive version A of your email, and another group will receive version B.

Analyzing the engagement from group A as compared to group B, and using data-driven decisions from these results will help ensure you get optimal performance metrics such as open rates and click-throughs - leading to successful campaigns achieving greater results over time!

6. Keep the Design Clean and Simple

A great email newsletter should be designed with clarity and simplicity in mind. Choosing clean, crisp typography that's easy to take-in will help ensure readers have an enjoyable experience while engaging with your content.

The best email newsletter designs utilize a solid amount of whitespace within the layout; this allows for visuals or other elements to draw attention and emphasize important topics highlighted in the message – resulting in a more effective communication strategy overall.

Email newsletter builders can provide some of the best newsletter templates, which makes it easier than ever to create visually captivating newsletters with design best practices.

Additionally, these platforms are designed for quick and user-friendly email customization, as they come equipped with drag-and-drop functionality.

These features allow people like you to produce high performing, consistent, and engaging email newsletters without the hassle of hiring designers or coders.

All the while, you are able to save time by using pre-built templates so that you get to focus your energy on the content itself, rather than the design and content hierarchy.

7. Craft Compelling Copy

Crafting powerful copy is the key to creating an effective email newsletter. Keep your content concise, clear and engaging so it resonates with readers.

The best email newsletters focus on conversational language over technical jargon - when they understand what you want them to do, they are more likely to take action!

With thoughtfully crafted messaging that speaks directly to subscribers’ interests, you can create a successful newsletter that consistently delivers your desired results.

8. Use Clear Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

Make sure your email newsletters are reaching their full potential by utilizing clear, compelling and relevant calls-to-action buttons!

By taking the time to craft effective CTAs that stand out from the rest of your content with contrasting colors or buttons, you can drive higher engagement levels as well as conversions.

Don't forget there is a fine line between enough visibility for an actionable CTA and too much which may overwhelm readers - strike just the right balance for optimum results!

Not sure how to balance it all out? Have no fear– email newsletter builders are here! With customizable templates that have the best practices built in to drive engagement and action, all you have to do is find the template that suits your message and get to crafting.

9. Measure and Analyze Performance Metrics

Measuring and analyzing the performance of your email newsletter is essential for evaluating its effectiveness and making data-driven decisions to improve your campaigns. Monitor key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to identify what's working well and what needs improvement.

Open rates measure the percentage of subscribers who opened your newsletter; click-through rates measure the percentage of subscribers who clicked on a link in your newsletter.

Conversions measure the percentage of subscribers who took a desired action like making a purchase or filling out a form. By tracking these metrics and analyzing the results, you can optimize your email newsletters for better engagement, increased conversions, and a greater return on investment.

If you’re looking for an easy way to track email performance, newsletter builders provide analytics and insights - this includes open and click-through rates. When you use an email builder, you receive access to deep analytics to help you improve upon your newsletters with each send!

Person reviewing a chart showing performance metrics, analytics and data
Picture from Pexels

10. Encourage Sharing and Referrals

With the click of a button, you can dramatically expand your newsletter's reach and subscriber base. Make it as easy as possible for people to share content from within your newsletter by adding social media sharing buttons or links.

Or incentivize existing subscribers with referral programs – giving them rewards for referring new readers to join in on what you have going! Don’t be afraid to get creative – leverage the power of shared connections and referrals so that no stone is left unturned when growing visibility and impact through email newsletters.

Wrap Up

Email newsletters can be a powerful marketing tool for businesses if executed correctly and you follow all the best practices. Be sure to nail your subject lines, design an optimized mobile experience, customize content to add a personal touch, and ensure that what you share resonates with readers.

Although it seems like there are a lot of email newsletter best practices to remember, you’re not allow in the creation process.

You can leverage email builder tools that have the best practices built-in so that you get to simply focus on the content itself! It’s not wonder why so many internal communications and marketing teams are choosing an email builder to remove all the guesswork.

With hundreds of fully customizable templates, drag and drop functionality, and no code building, you can easily boost engagment and focus on the content.