08 Oct 2015
The e-newsletter may be deemed by some PR professionals in B2B PR a comparatively 'old school' mode of communications, but it is also one that has consistently proven its value over the years. To this day, it can remain a key component of a powerful marketing campaign, but there are definitely ways to 'do' e-newsletters, and ways not to, as we have outlined below.
Do...
- Divide your subscribers into lists. Are you delivering the most appropriate possible content to all of the natural segments of your subscriber base? If not, make those divisions formal, so that they receive only suitably customised e-newsletters.
- Experiment with timing. Different e-newsletter campaigns may show different levels of effectiveness when pitched at different times of the day or days of the week. Try taking a new approach for every new campaign.
- Seek feedback from unsubscribers. You can't guarantee that you will win them back even with the friendliest email asking why they unsubscribed, but you could still gather plenty of invaluable information for future campaigns.
- Use links intelligently. Analytics can be great for observing your audience's use of your e-newsletter's links - but you should make sure that those links are well-placed and actually work.
- Use focused calls to action. It's great to have lots of subscribers and readers, but ultimately, your e-newsletters must persuade your recipients to act - so invite them to do just that.
Don't...
- Make your e-newsletter 'all about you'. E-newsletters should be geared towards providing genuinely valuable content to your target audience, not simply telling them all that is good and wonderful about your company.
- Forget about personality. Your e-newsletters need to be engaging, as if they were actually written by a human being. Remember that they have a lot of competition for attention in your subscribers' inboxes!
- Provide too much information. The content in your e-newsletter should be digestible, rather than a great big hulk of information that the reader will be barely inclined to plough through.
- Dominate your e-newsletter with text. Only including text in your e-newsletter - with none of the extra punctuation or interest that images, video, polls or other media can provide - is a sure recipe for unreadability and mass unsubscribes.
- Use too many images. A smattering of small images across your e-newsletter can work well - but overwhelmingly large, slow-loading images are somewhat less effective, and might even send your email straight into the subscriber's 'spam' folder.
- Include sales jargon! Especially in the subject line as modern day servers are designed to detect words such as ‘free’, ‘offer’, ‘guarantee’. These words will also flag your enewsletter as spam and will most likely be instantly deleted.
Want to take all of the stress out of effectively composing and distributing e-newsletters for yourself? If so, simply get in touch with Vantage Public Relations' seasoned and capable PR professionals to talk to us about our free, no-obligation audit.
