Creating Your Own Newsletters

Staying in constant contact with your subscribed audience is a great way to stay top of mind. The more they hear from you, the quicker they think of your services when they are considering a purchase in your industry.

Setting up your newsletter requires a basic understanding of how to prioritize your information. This should be done with the readers perspective in mind. When brainstorming topics to write about, consider what your audience will find most valuable, coming from you. You may want to send out a newsletter to share a sale or update about your business. In most cases it's best practice to add icing to your cake, by sharing some engaging content with your newsletter subscribers alongside your call to action.

Let's say you're in Marketing, (like us!) and you want to send out a newsletter to share a new promotion you have on websites. First thing to consider is your contact list.

Newsletter Contact List

Who are they? Do they want to hear from you about your products, or did they subscribe for insights and information? If you sell all kinds of funky sunglasses, you can assume by subscribers just want to see new exciting products. But in our case, Lex Digital Marketing audiences expect a bit of both - product info and industry info. We don't want to lose the interest of our subscribers who follow us for marketing tips, so we want to build out content that will help readers feel like marketing experts. Keeping in mind that our main goal with the newsletter is to pitch our sale.

Prioritizing newsletter content

The three sections we want to highlight in our newsletter will be: Sale or Promotion, Engaging Content, and Call to Action. This is how we would set up our newsletter.

Priority 1: Who are we?

The top of your newsletter should have your logo somewhere, and possibly quick links to your website and social streams. "Forward email" button is a great tool as well.

Priority 2: Engaging image that is topic specific

Download an image that is high resolution. If you are working in MailChimp or Constant Contact you will have the ability to edit the photo to insert some text. This is where you'll want to place a one-liner or title that will describe the engaging content section - which we like to refer to as the "Mini Blog".

Priority 3: Free information builds up trust and credibility (Mini Blog)

This is where you will write your "Mini Blog". We call it a Mini Blog section because it's where you will write well-researched and juicy information on a subject. In our example, because our promotion is about websites, we'd want to make our "Mini Blog" about the benefits of websites, or website trends in 2021.

Best Practice: Keep the email section contained to about 2-3 short paragraphs, and write 2-3 more in continuation on your actual website blog. When the newsletter subscribers finish reading the 2-3 paragraphs in your email and want to "Read More", you can add a link that relocates them to your website blog to finish the piece. (Your website is where you always want to send people to take action with your brand!)

Priority 4: Promotion

After you gift your readers their free information, you can then ask them to engage with the promotion you are running. This should be kept short and sweet, and be 50% imagery and 50% text. Lex Digital Marketing is having a Fresh Start Website Sale from March 4, 2021 - April 4, 2021. All websites starting at $399! The image will be a small ad placed below the text, and under that you will find a text prompt to "reply to this email for more details".

The image may look like:

Like a pro: Some people have settings in their inbox that don't automatically load images in emails, and so unfortunately they may not see your email in it's intended state. That's why it's always good to use Header and Paragraph fonts to break up the text in a visual way that notifies the reader about what's most important in the texted area.

Priority 5: Closing and contact

This is where you add a personalized closing to the email, and have your contact information, social links, website links, phone number for quick access.

Can my newsletter end up in SPAM folders?

Yes, but if it makes you feel better it happens to everyone! There could be several reasons your newsletters are going to spam. Maybe you added subscribers without their knowledge and they moved you to "Spam". If enough people move you to spam, it can effect the performance of every newsletter you create in the future, so don't add people without their consent. It's illegal in many places, check out the CASL Regulations in Canada.

Another reason could be that you haven't set up your own domain. But the most common is that your sending email address, subject lines, or message content need to be tweaked to follow the terms and conditions of whatever newsletter tool you are using.

How frequently should I be sending out newsletters?

Bi-weekly newsletters work well for some industries where integral elements are always changing, like Real Estate for example. Businesses that have frequent sales and promotions can also benefit from frequent newsletters, as long as they are keeping the contents short and sweet.

If you are an independent service provider, like an accountant, that has an annual or bi-annual working relationship with clients, you should consider sending out a content heavy quarterly newsletter to address big industry news, original tips for your audience, and a personal message.

Working with Lex Digital Marketing

Sometimes, business owners and entrepreneurs don't have the time to create content and work on digital marketing. That's where we can help! We have writers who deep dive into our clients industries to write about hot and trendy topics related to their businesses. Our designers build out branded eye catching visuals and apply best practice text formatting.

Our newsletter services start at just $99. Find out more by booking a free consultation with us!