Tips and Tricks to Creating a Successful E-Newsletter

This article was written by Katie Cook, Knowledge Management Strategist at JSI.

Nowadays social media is all the buzz, but the power of a well thought out e-newsletter can’t be ignored. Bottom line – people check their email.  The key to running a successful e-newsletter is to deliver a quality message on a regular basis to the people who want to hear it. Below are a few steps to follow and best practices for starting an e-newsletter.

Step 1 - Research

• Make sure you have the time and the staff to dedicate to putting this out on a regular schedule. Creating and managing an e-newsletter can range from 10-30 hours a month depending on your frequency.  Readers will get to know your brand better and look for your e-mails the more consistent you are with your schedule.
• Find similar e-newsletters in your field that you know are successful to see what type of content they use as well as their design and layout.
• Determine your business goals (trying to increase knowledge of your project, trying to create leads for funding, etc).

Step 2 – Develop Content

• Decide on the type of content you want to include in your e-newsletter. Try to pick a common theme and carry that through each edition. In most cases it is not ideal to have a random jumble of topics because it could confuse the reader.
• Try to keep your e-newsletter 90% educational and only 10% promotional. Too much self-promotion will be off-putting to your readers so focus on sending relevant, educational, and timely information. 
• Send shorter e-newsletters on a more frequent basis. Start with 3-5 items on a bi-weekly or monthly basis.
• Come up with an editorial calendar to set the frequency of the e-newsletter and who will be involved in content creation.  Try not to send e-mails out to your readers more than once a week.
• Once the e-newsletter’s focus, frequency and content balance has been decided, make sure to communicate this to your readers on the subscription page. Show them what they are signing up for and try adding a preview link to read past editions.
• The subject line is very important to get the users to open and want to read your e-newsletter. Try to have a different, creative, engaging subject line for each e-newsletter you send. Not too long (fewer than 50 characters) and no acronyms!
• Every e-newsletter is going to have multiple calls to action such as reading the full article or a share button, but try to feature just one in each edition either with a visual button or bright color. Make it super simple for your subscribers to know what you want them to do.

Step 3 – Design, Code, Test and Send

• Keep copy and design minimal using plenty of white space. Only use inline CSS for the best consistency among the finicky email providers.  
• The e-newsletter template design should include your company or project colors, logo and any other important corporate/project branding elements. If a USAID project, be sure to review your branding agreement to ensure compliance.
• For mobile friendly designs stick to one column and keep it simple. The targeted use of images is important to draw the readers eye, but not too many.
• Make it easy for people to unsubscribe and be sure to follow the can-spam regulations.
• Run A/B testing on subject lines, headlines, copy length and the use of images. A/B testing involves testing two versions of an e-newsletter.
• Once your design is ready be sure to test it in different browsers and email providers. Here is a free tool you can use.
• Some basic suggestions on how to structure the e-newsletter to increase readership and click rates are:

1. Send your email from a person, not a generic company address.
2. Customize the preview text shown in e-mail clients like Gmail. This is the text you see for each email next to the subject line in your inbox.
3. Don’t forget to format the text only version with things like hyperlinks and paragraph breaks. It is a best practice to always include a text only version for those that prefer it and to help avoid spam filters.
4. Be sure to include hyperlinks around all of your images as well as use the alternate text feature so that a description pops up when you roll over the image or if the image doesn’t display in the e-mail provider.  
5. Add social sharing buttons (not follow buttons) which will help your readers share your content. Simplify sharing even more by adding in premade tweets they can send.
6. Add a forward email option for users which is usually done through your online e-mail solution such as MailChimp or Constant Contact.

• Test what the best time is to send out your e-newsletter to your intended audience. Try different times and see which gets the best result. Some of the industry standards state that most emails are sent between Monday and Friday with Tuesday and Thursday being the highest-volume days. Subscribers are more likely to open email after 12pm, while the most active hours are between 2-5pm in the US.

Step 4 - Measure

• Measure your click through rates, unsubscribes, forwards/shares and traffic to your website for each edition. This will help you better refine your content by seeing which were the most clicked links and what was shared the most. The industry average for click through rates is 4.3%.
• Some additional measurements you can report on are delivery rate, list growth rate, and bounce rate. Also make sure to keep your list clean and flush out your hard bounces frequently (the e-mails that don’t go through because the email address no longer exists etc).  

JSI's Knowledge Management Strategist Katie Cook has worked on contracts assisting USAID's Bureau for Global Health for over eight years and has over 13 years of experience working in the fields of communications and knowledge management with a focus on websites, e-newsletters and social media.