15 Must Know Tips to Boost Newsletter Engagement

4.10.2023
Read time: 13 min
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15 Must Know Tips to Boost Newsletter Engagement
Try Publicate For Free Today
02.03.2022
Read time: 13 min

There are many ways to boost customer and employee engagement, but at the heart of all of them, communication is the key. But, how you say something is as important, if not more important, than what you say.

This is why so many companies turn to email newsletters because of their powerful ROI and reach. Newsletters are a valuable medium to get your messages across, but without newsletter engagement, it’s a lost cause.

We’re going to dive into great newsletter engagement ideas and see how email newsletter templates set you up for success in your communication efforts.

Guide Index
Gmail on laptop
Picture form Unsplash

Why are Emails Important?

With over 4 billion email users and counting, email is a ubiquitous way to connect with customers and employees alike. Pretty much everyone you’re trying to reach is going to be using email, so it’s a surefire way to get your message across.

Whether you’re using email newsletters to keep your employees informed about company happenings and updates or using email newsletters to market to customers to drive sales, there are email newsletter templates for every purpose.

What is an Email Newsletter?

Speaking of email newsletters, let’s define what they are exactly. Email newsletters can be internal or external.

Internal email newsletters share news about your company, upcoming events, and valuable information like new products and partnership announcements to employees. External email newsletters are used for marketing purposes to connect with your target audience.

Company newsletters balance design and copy to make for an eye-catching readership experience. The great news is that with the help of an email builder, anyone can create, design, and send email newsletters simply.

By using templates and drag-and-drop functionality, all the tools you need exist within the email builder platform.

Why Use an Email Newsletter?

With strong newsletter engagement, you have the power to boost sales, retain invested employees, enhance collaboration, connect with your customers, and innovate your business.

By using an email newsletter, you always have the tool in your back pocket to communicate with the most important people that drive your business forward, be it internally or externally.

Email newsletters are a low effort, high return method to reach business goals. By staying connected and at the top of mind for your customers, your business has the potential to always be the answer to their needs.

Why is Newsletter Engagement Important?

If you send an important letter to someone and they never open it, it’s as if you didn’t send the letter, right?

This is the crux of why newsletter engagement is so important. The goal of any communication that you send is for it to be read, understood, and oftentimes, acted upon. Email newsletters are intended to be valuable to receive because you want your audience to look forward to opening them and seeing what’s new.

If not, they’ll unsubscribe, and you can potentially lose a customer. For internal communications, it’s always crucial that employees know the latest happenings to stay up-to-date with the business.

Person holding iphone with email newsletter with catchy subject line
Picture from Unsplash

How to Increase Newsletter Engagement?

There are many different newsletter ideas to increase newsletter engagement and tips to make it happen. While every company and newsletter is unique, these best practices can be applied to reap the benefit of increased engagement.

1. Offer Subscription Incentives

For businesses looking to grow their newsletter audience, a subscription incentive could be a helpful way to promote new subscribers. This is especially true for ecommerce businesses that can offer a discount on a product to sign up for the newsletter.

2. Write Catchy Subject Lines

A subject line is the first thing that your audience will see in their inbox, and it can make or break them even opening your email newsletter. That’s why it’s so important to write catchy subject lines that grab your readers’ attention and promote curiosity.

3. Add Multimedia

Videos, GIFs, and images help to break up email newsletter text and increase engagement. However, remember that when you embed videos, it can slow down your email delivery rate, so it’s recommended to link out to where readers can watch a video.

When you add images, you can use an email builder’s built-in image editor to crop and resize your photos to your liking.

4. Use Email Builders

Speaking of email builders, it’s one of the best things you can use to boost newsletter engagement.

Email builders are purposefully designed to save you time by streamlining your email newsletter creation process. They offer hundreds of fully customizable templates that are pre-built using best practices to maximise your newsletter engagement. Plus no coders or designers needed!

Not to mention, with the top-notch email builders, you can send your email newsletters using your preferred email service provider, like Gmail and Outlook thanks to direct integrations.

5. Use Branding

Email newsletters are an avenue to increase brand awareness and brand loyalty, so naturally, you’ll want to use your own company’s branding!

Email builders make this easier to do because you can save your brand kit and styles so that every email that is created looks and feels like it’s coming from your business.

6. Leverage Storytelling

Your business has a one-of-a-kind story, and you should be telling it! With storytelling, you can expand upon your website’s “About Us” page to share more of where you come from, why you do what you do, and why it matters to your customers.

7. Send Consistently

Email newsletters are typically sent on a consistent basis so your audience knows when to expect them. For some companies, it can be as often as weekly, while a common cadence is at least once a month.

8. Don’t Overdo It

While you may want to put everything in one newsletter, hold back on doing so. It can be overwhelming to readers, and you won’t want to shut them down before they get started. In order to balance your newsletter, mix design and images with text.

You can also break down your email newsletter in different sections using captivating headlines to guide readers.

9. Make it Mobile Responsive

One of the most critical tips to take away from this is to ensure your emails are responsive. This means that they will appear as you intend across different device sizes. If you build your emails from scratch, you’ll have to code this in and test across devices.

Alternatively, you can leverage an email builder that’s already been tested across dozens of devices and is ensured to be mobile responsive.

10. Segment Your Audience

Your existing customers need to know different information than your prospects, just like your design team needs to know different company updates than your accounting team.

Audience segmentation makes this possible to accomplish so that you can break down your audience based on the message and only send relevant information to those who need it.

11. Include Call-to-Actions

A call-to-action is a direction to your readership as to their next step. For example, if you’re trying to boost sales and launch a new product, you may add a button with a link to “Shop Now.”

If you’re promoting a new blog post, then you’d offer a snippet with a “Read More” call-to-action. Your call-to-actions dictate what you expect your audience to do with the messages you send, so they should be clear and concise.

Email builders are filled with hundreds of professionally designed templates that already include where your call-to-action should go so you can effectively maximize engagement!

12. Make it Personal

Although email newsletters are sent to mass groups, they should feel like they are coming from an individual and are directed towards an individual not a mass group of people.

A simple way to accomplish this is to personalize the message wherever possible, such as by adding reader’s first names to the greeting. Audience segmentation also helps to personalize the message to their needs.

13. Focus on Value

Before you start creating any newsletter, think about the value you are adding to the reader’s lives by sending it. This exercise helps to prioritize the content and copy in a way that makes the most sense.

14. Add a Cliffhanger

Keep your audience wanting more by leaving a little out. By not giving it all away in the newsletter itself, you can direct your call-to-actions to the next step to increase clicks (a.k.a. engagement).

15. Get Feedback

Newsletter engagement depends on your audience and their sentiments about your newsletters. So, it’s great to ask for feedback and send out surveys to learn about your readership’s thoughts.

Additionally, analytics provide data-driven feedback. Email builders can include detailed analytics such as click rates, open rates and even heat maps, which is another reason why you’d want to use them!

Wrap Up

Emails newsletters are a wonderful way to communicate with employees and customers, but it all depends on newsletter engagement. As you improve newsletter communication, you’ll undoubtedly see the advantages of doing so.

With email builders, many of these best practices mentioned above are made easy and seamless because of the templates, drag-and-drop functionality, and inclusion of analytics to prevent the guesswork and streamline the entire process. This maximises your enagement, saves time and resources.