How to Write the Best Newsletter Opening Message
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It’s all about first impressions, right? In relationships, along with digital communications like email newsletters, this is surely the case. For this reason, it’s of great value to write an appealing newsletter opening message to grab the attention of your audience.
We’re going to share why a newsletter introduction message matters so much and provide some inspiration with newsletter opening lines examples.
A newsletter opening message is exactly what it sounds like! It’s the first line (or lines) of your email’s body copy.
Sometimes, the email opening message also appears as the preview text in your reader’s inbox. Preview text is the small copy that appears under the subject line of an email.
While it’s an option to write a different preview text than your newsletter opening message, some marketers and HR professionals will allow it to default to the same newsletter introduction message.
A newsletter opening message is an introduction. So, naturally, its content will be about what a reader can expect to gain from the rest of the email. It works to position readers contextually.
Let’s take a look at some newsletter opening message examples based on specific situations you’re likely to send communications about. We’ll also sprinkle in general best practices that can be applied to any type of communications.
A welcome email is the first email a new subscriber receives. It’s like a personalized hello and thank you for signing up. For these emails, it’s best to get to the point and use messages like “Welcome to (Company Name) or (Newsletter Name)!” or “Thank you for signing up!”
It’s also recommended to follow it up with a cheerful message of being happy to have them or what they can expect. You can follow it with a call-to-action to update their preferences or start shopping, for example.
For internal communications and external communications, holiday emails are a must! Email builder tools are often stacked with holiday email templates for every occasion.
With email builders, you can get up and running to send your communications in a timely manner with no need for designers or coders, thanks to the drag-and-drop functionality and visual editor.
Some common holidays that marketers send newsletters on include: Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, New Year, Easter, and more.
For promotional holiday newsletters, it’s good to start with an opening message that ties the promotion in with the holiday cheer. For straight holiday well wishes, you can simply write, “Happy [Holiday Name] from your friends at [Company Name]!” or “Wishing you and your family a ….”
One-liners are a great way to start off a newsletter that’s filled with any type of information. Here’s why - it grabs attention, is quick to read, and is easy to remember! A one-liner can be funny, sappy, or emotionally-driven, depending on the content of your newsletter.
For sales newsletters or those that are aiming to persuade, a statistic is a wonderful way to hook your readers in to continue learning more. Numbers make it easy for people to understand a message quickly, and they also drive social proof. Statistics can positively impact click-through rates, too.
For ecommerce newsletters that wish to pull a prospective buyer back in, an abandoned cart email (often automated) is a useful tactic. Abandoned cart emails remind shoppers that they added something to their cart, but they have yet to check out and pay.
To entice them to return to their cart, you can send a reminder email. These emails should try to spur urgency, which is why you might want to opt for a newsletter opening message that says something like, “We reserved your cart for the next 24 hours.” Or, you can get funny with a message like, “Your cart says it misses you.”
If you’re running a blog that routinely publishes content, you can spread the word and drive traffic with an email newsletter.
When you round up content, you’ll want your readers to immediately know what they are looking at and drive them to “Read More.”
You can write a newsletter opening message with the headline of the new blog, or list a couple of blogs with an opener like “Latest Blogs” or “Top Reads.” Keeping it short and sweet leads your audience to click-through to the actual blog content, which is after all, the purpose of your newsletter in the first place.
Regardless of what your email newsletters are about and the content you include, the newsletter opening message should be effective. There’s no pure science to it because it’s content creation, and as you know, that’s more of an art than a science.
However, there are certainly best practices that are worthwhile to follow as they’ve consistently proven to work to boost engagement and drive conversions. Let’s take a look at some of the tips to remember when you’re busy crafting your next newsletter opening message:
Long opening messages do the opposite of what you want - they turn readers away. Readers go through so many emails a day. They want to get in and get out, and take with them the value provided. This means that the best newsletter opening messages are short and to-the-point.
If you’re not sure what to include in the opening message or what’s the most important part of your email, then bullet out what you want readers to remember. See what bullet sticks out to you as the most important. Then, you can prioritize working with that as your starting point.
Additionally, you can use the help of email builders, which come stacked with hundreds of customizable email templates. These templates follow this best practice to help keep you concise with their template format and placeholder text.
With the email mapped out, you can maximize engagement, and then utilize the provided analytics to further optimize your content as you continue to send your campaigns.
You’ll likely remember from any English class you ever took that there are two very necessary aspects when writing anything to anyone.
The first is to “know your audience” and the second is to “hook them in.” A newsletter opening message is the hook sentence. You can grab attention with the use of statistics, humor, punchy one-liners, questions, alliterative phrases, or personal stories. Anything that spurs curiosity is the right place to begin.
Whenever possible (and relevant), consider using an email opening message that is personalized to the reader or group of readers.
If you can’t personalize on an individual level, then you can also segment your audience into specific cohorts (i.e. people who have purchased from you in the last week or people who haven’t opened a newsletter in the prior month).
With any form of personalization, you get the chance to make the reader feel special, which will immediately hook them in.
It’s rare that people open an email newsletter and desire to read an entire block of text. That’s why it’s useful to balance copy with imagery.
When you use an email builder, you can leverage templates that are pre-built with image blocks and content blocks in order to direct the reader’s eyes.
Also, email builders feature the option to edit images directly inside the newsletters editor. This makes it easier to crop, edit, and align images within seconds so you don’t have to waste time working in external tools to get the image to fit.
The top email builders are tested across email service providers, so you can confidently know that your emails will render as you expect them to once you hit send!
With all communications, the goal is to continue to drive trust and engagement. When writing an email opening message, focus on the content that you’re sharing. The opening message leads readers into what they can expect from the rest of the email newsletter.
It only makes sense to write an opening message that’s relevant to the content and not something random (just for the sake of grabbing attention).
The aid of an email builder tool will free up your time so that you can focus more on the content of your message, rather than having to worry about designing and testing your emails.
With an email builder, you can access thousands of email newsletter templates that are ready for your customization and content.
Plus, some of the top email builders allow you to export your HTML newsletter into your preferred email provider like Gmail or Outlook to send it out. That means you don’t have to learn a new system, you can seamlessly use the email provider you’re used to and also gain analytics.
A newsletter opening message is like a welcome mat. It’s either going to entice you to open the door and continue your journey or turn you away.
There's a good reason why you’d want to spend your time focusing on the opening of your email newsletter because it sets the tone for the rest of your communications and is the first opportunity to boost engagement with your audience.
To drive engagement further, gain more time and be able to better focus on the content of your newsletter itself, you can leverage email builders and templates. These tools follow all the best practices, giving you opening message ideas and taking care of the design and development aspects for you!
