What is the Purpose of a Newsletter? Ultimate Guide
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There’s more to keeping your audience engaged than social media. In fact, an email newsletter could be a more effective tool with an even better ROI - and less doom-scrolling!
But what is the purpose of a newsletter? This blog covers exactly that. By the end, you’ll see why a newsletter is a must for any business, how to create one (no design skills required), what to include, and how to make sure it fits with your wider business goals.
Read on for everything you need to know - including the best time-saving tools - about your newsletter.
A newsletter is a written publication, typically emailed to subscribers, customers or internal employees on a regular basis.
Businesses create newsletters to share relevant news and valuable information with their audience. Essentially, it keeps you connected with the people who might buy from you. You can send anything from tips to company/industry news, blog links, product promotions, discounts and offers straight to each subscriber’s inbox.
Most newsletters are sent weekly, monthly or quarterly, as part of a larger digital marketing strategy. They’re most effective when they’re not all focused on the hard sell, but offer entertaining, valuable content that makes subscribers want to stick around.
While traditional email campaigns (like product launches or Black Friday offers) focus on quick wins, newsletters are based on long-term gains.
By providing your audience with engaging, valuable content, you build trust and maintain strong relationships, while improving your brand’s image and keeping your business top-of-mind.
Over time, this builds a loyal, engaged customer base. Whenever someone is in the market for your products or services, you’re likely to be their first port of call.
This is your newsletter, so you get to choose its purpose. Choose something that fits with your wider digital marketing objectives, and make sure it’s measurable.
Some purposes could include:
Top tip: Whatever your goal, the best way to achieve it is through consistent, engaging emails that look beautiful. The most effective newsletters are designed with an email builder. That’s a drag-and-drop tool with hundreds of pre-designed templates, so anyone can design professional newsletters quickly and easily!
First and foremost: Consumers enjoy newsletters. 77% of B2B buyers prefer email communication over all other marketing channels, and 40% of marketers say newsletters are the most important channel in their strategy.
So beyond being well-received, what is the purpose of a newsletter within your wider strategy? Let’s see some of the key benefits:
The best newsletter examples follow a set of best practices. To benefit your subscribers, your newsletters should look good and provide value. To benefit you and your team, the process should be quick and easy - that’s how you make sure you never miss an issue!
Maximize engagement with a consistent design that’s easy on the eyes.
The best types of newsletters contain bite-sized, scannable sections. They usually include a header, company logo, high-quality imagery, and subheadings to break up the content.
Use a template to keep your newsletter consistent and recognizable. This also saves the time-consuming job of creating a new layout every time. With an email builder, you can access hundreds of templates for every purpose and industry. No designers or coders are needed to build beautiful, professional newsletters, saving you both time and money.
You might be thinking of sending emails via Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign or another similar platform.
You’ll often hear that Gmail and Outlook aren’t suitable for sending mass email newsletters. However, with an email builder, you can create a professional, highly engaging HTML newsletter in Outlook or Gmail and over 50 other email service providers. (You can even track performance - but we’ll get to that later!)
This takes away the learning curve of a new platform. You can simply build emails in your email builder and export them to the sending platform you’re already familiar with.
By using an email builder, you can be confident you’re following all best practices.
Email builders let you design emails in minutes - with no coding needed! This frees up your time, so you can focus on rolling out exciting, relevant content to your subscribers.
Email builders come with hundreds of fully customizable templates that are designed for engagement, as well as other helpful and time-saving features.
For example, you can save and organize content from around the web or your company’s Slack channel into a content library. So, your content is ready to be dragged and dropped into your newsletter as you need it. There is even a brand kit to keep your newsletters always on brand, plus collaboration and approval flows.
With an email builder you also get access to over 2 million royalty-free images and GIFs, and use an inline image editor to crop and align images without leaving the platform. Say goodbye to the days of using third-party editing tools and uploading images, for them to still not fit your design perfectly!
Newsletter frequency is a topic we hear a lot.
You want to strike the balance between keeping subscribers engaged without annoying them. You also want enough time between newsletters to develop fresh content and have something interesting to say.
With that in mind, we recommend starting with a monthly email.
However, you can scale this up or down as you learn what your subscribers want, and when you know what you’d like to share. Some brands can pack value into bi-weekly, weekly or even daily emails.
The key is to stick to your schedule, and let subscribers know when the frequency will change. Keeping people in the loop is a great way to reinforce trust and engagement.
Creating a newsletter doesn’t have to be complicated. And, in most cases, the ROI of email marketing makes it worthwhile.
Here are some high-level steps for anyone just getting started.
The fun part: Naming your newsletter.
It’s tempting to come up with a fun, creative or clever name. However, remember that you might miss out on subscribers if people don’t know what your newsletter offers.
So, aim for clarity. Choose a name that immediately conveys what your newsletter is all about. Here are some real-life examples for inspiration:
Top tip: Have you noticed how many newsletter names include the frequency or schedule of the publication? It’s a good idea to work something similar into your own, by tacking words like “daily”, “weekly” or “Monday” onto the name.
Create a list of your favorite names and ask friends, family and colleagues for some feedback.
Writing an email newsletter is similar to writing for the web.
You’ll nail email copywriting if you can keep content concise, snappy and interesting. 85% of email users open emails on their mobiles. So, catchy headlines, short paragraphs and bullet points make it much easier to digest.
Plus, your newsletter should generally direct traffic to your blog or website. Think of your newsletter as “teaser” content; get to the point quickly and let users find out more by clicking a link.
A general rule we follow here is: If it’s fun to write, it’s fun to read. Make sure you’re interested in whatever you have to say, and that positivity will generally translate to the reader, for engaging newsletters your subscribers look forward to receiving.
There’s no point in writing a newsletter if it doesn’t support your business goals.
Always ask yourself, what is the purpose of a newsletter for your company? With this in mind, you can make sure your newsletter is doing its job.
For example, if the goal is to convert readers into paying customers, your newsletters should drive traffic to your landing pages. In this case, double down on the benefits of your product or service, and use an enticing call-to-action (CTA) to push traffic to those pages.
If the goal is to grow your subscriber base, encourage recipients to forward the email to other people. Be sure to promote the newsletter on other channels, including your website and social media pages.
If your newsletter is internal, and the goal is to keep employees engaged in the company, keep the content fresh and interesting to that audience. You could cover company news, Employee of the Month announcements, and add some just-for-fun sections, too.
Now you have a goal in mind, along with some strategies to get there, you’ll need to track newsletter performance.
Some key metrics include:
When you use an email builder, you can track the first three metrics in this list. Email builders collect data no matter where you send newsletters from. So, even if you use Outlook or Gmail, you can get real insights into email performance.
Armed with the data, you can confidently evaluate how well your newsletter is performing. Use the insights to guide future issues and continually improve your newsletter over time.
Running out of newsletter ideas is any marketer’s nightmare. To avoid that scenario, keep a list of the types of content you want to include. We’ll call these “buckets”.
As ideas pop up, fill the buckets. When it’s time to write your newsletter, you’ll always have fresh and interesting content to include.
Here are some ideas for your buckets:
Email builders make it easy to keep on top of these buckets - you won’t even need to create a new spreadsheet! Whenever you come across articles on the web, or images and stories in your internal Slack channel, you can add them to your email builder’s library. Organize the content into folders, which saves time when you’re writing a newsletter while making it easy to collaborate with your team.
‘What is the purpose of a newsletter’ is a question that largely depends on your business and its own wider marketing goals. However, we hope this guide has sparked ideas on what your newsletter could achieve, and how to get there.
Some common challenges of a regular newsletter include creating an engaging design, adding valuable content, and having enough time to build the newsletter. An email builder helps you overcome all of those challenges, providing a fast, easy way to stay connected with your audience.
