It seems to be that email newsletters are receiving a better outcome than other platforms. So why not create one? According to MediaPost.com, an email newsletter receives better views than a tweet on Twitter. "Let’s say you have 100,000 followers on Twitter. Maybe 3% will see your tweet. But an email newsletter with the same number of subscribers will pull a 20% open rate, the authors write. That’s 20,000 people." A common goal of news is to reach more people and this can prove just that.
Also with email newsletter you get a more detailed report of who actually viewed your info. You can't quite get that with Instagram or Facebook. If someone viewed a photo, you wouldn't know. With email, you can see who and the percentage of people who opened the newsletter, an open rate.
Now speaking of an open rate, how can you make it that people are actually opening your newsletter. Below are some helpful tips to grab your reader's attention and hopefully gain more subscribers.
1. Have creativity when it comes to the email subject line. It's good to have the name of your newsletter in there, but switch it up here and there. Seeing the same old title gets boring.
2. Make subscribing easy. Don't ask readers for their whole life info in order to subscribe. Something simple like their email address and their name is enough. Also readers shouldn't have to search your website high and low to figure out how to subscribe. Have a link or a tab available.
3. Study and analyze your open rates. Identify how many people are opening your newsletter based on what time it was sent. Also pay attention to what headlines were used. Take those results and improve.
4. Your email newsletter should be mobile friendly. A majority of people use their cell phones to open and answer their emails. So your newsletter MUST be able to viewed on a cellular device. Most people are on the go and don't have time to get to a PC.
These are just a few tips for how to have a successful newsletter, mainly getting readers to open it first. Next post we'll take a look at examples of great newsletters like The Skimm or Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter.