How to write an email newsletter people actually want to read

An email newsletter contains updates, news, and essential information. These emails are sent to people who opted to receive them – usually regular website visitors, customers, fans and followers. Since you’re only sending these emails to a predetermined group, using them as email marketing can be more cost-effective than other methods when used correctly.

When written properly, email newsletters can engage an audience, increase site traffic, drive more sales, build your credibility as an authority in your niche and grow your community of subscribers.

Having said that, it does require you to do your due diligence and perform extensive market research to ensure that people are actually reading it. So how do you write an email newsletter that people actually want to read?

Read other successful newsletters

In your opinion, what makes a newsletter great? What makes a newsletter successful? The only way to learn more about writing a good newsletter is by reading good newsletters. Make sure you look at examples both inside and out of your industry – you never know where you’ll find inspiration.

Decide what kind of newsletter yours will be

Why have you decided to start a newsletter? What exactly do you want to say? What does your audience need to hear? These are all good questions to ask yourself before you start writing your newsletter.

An unfocused newsletter just ends up looking like a random mess in people’s already over-cluttered inboxes. Decide now what kind of newsletter you want yours to be, and stay focused. Whether you stick to a specific theme or format, figure out what your audience wants to read about, then write about it.

Get creative – don’t just sell, sell, sell

Your newsletter content has to be balanced. A good balance is about 90% educational or entertaining content and only 10% promotional. The fact is, even your biggest fans don’t want to hear about your products and services 100% of the time.

The harder you sell, the less your readers will engage with your content. If you want people to actively open your emails, read them, and hopefully even enjoy them, there has to be something in it for them.

Step 7. Test, test, then test again

Once you (or your copywriter) have crafted the perfect newsletter, it’s time to test it. Then test it again. And again.

Use different subject lines for different subscriber groups, and look at your analytics to see which ones perform best. Mix up the days and times you send your newsletter out, to see if there’s a pattern in your audience’s behaviour. Send them to different email platforms to make sure everything is working as it should.

Make sure to preview it on mobile and desktop to ensure that it is reader friendly on both platforms.

Stay consistent

It may sound obvious, but readers will only lose interest as quickly as you do. If you miss a week or month, depending on how often you send out your newsletter, or the quality very obviously decreases, people will either have half-forgotten about you by the time the next one rolls around or, at the very least, be less keen to open it.

If you need some more inspiration, make sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Dear Fellow.