Back to Basics: Step 3 Sending a newsletter
Once you’ve picked your platform, built your landing page and you’re inviting people to join your email community, the next step is to send a newsletter to your list.
Newsletters, rather than automated emails, sit under the tab called campaigns. Not to be confused with marketing campaigns (or plans for a specific promotion). A campaign is simply a single email sent to a specific group within your audience.
Next you’ll give your campaign a name, this will be the internal name for your email newsletter, so you can name it February 2025_1, or an outline of what it covers, or the name of the event/ subject it’s promoting. Just give it a name you will understand. Then you will give it a subject line. I’m going to do another blog around subject lines, because there’s rather a lot to say on the subject… But the most important thing to remember is that the only job of your subject line is to get your newsletter opened.
If you’ve preloaded your brand (or had someone, like me, do it for you), this next step will technically be quite straightforward. Whichever platform you have chosen, you’ll have template options for your campaigns.
Pick a template (or use the pre-built template I’ve built for you) and start building out your content.
Think about the content you wish to share for the next month and load it up in your email newsletter. Us marketing pros love to use newsletters to form the basis for content across other channels. Giving your newsletter community the insight first is also a mega selling point for joining the list.
If you’re not too sure about what to put in your newsletter, why not join a Newsletter Network session, my new monthly online coworking meet-up. I share tips, content ideas, themes for the month ahead, and you get to ask me (and the other business owners in the group) questions, bounce ideas around and have some accountability to actually get it done.
Newsletter content ideas
Your newsletter will be built to your audience and to suit your business objectives, so there isn’t a set formula for what makes a successful newsletter, soz about that.
But saying that I find for my clients that a mix of different content types, works really well.
Some examples of content ideas:
Book or podcast recommendations, explain why your audience would find this interesting/ useful/ entertaining, and include a link.
Expert thought leadership pieces - such as a blog you’ve written or an article you’ve read.
Testimonials - let you past clients tell your future clients how wonderful you are.
Sales content - please don’t forget to tell people how they can work with you in every newsletter you send.
Use a mix of text, images (make sure these are optimised for email), buttons, and gifs to bring your newsletter to life and to engage your audience.
Sending your email
Once you have built out your newsletter you’ll want to send a test email. This allows you to check the formatting on mobile and desktop and double-check the links you’ve included.
Once you’re happy that your newsletter looks perfect and functions beautifully, you will select the audience you want to send it to and schedule a send time. If you have one master list and you’ve not segmented your audience you select all subscribers. If your email is for a specific group - say you’ve set up a specific landing page as a waitlist for a new offer - you’ll select the group name you created.
The final thing you’ll do is to select the send time. Depending on the tool you use and the plan you have, you may be able to select ‘the most optimum time for your audience’, or a specific time you chose. Again, there aren’t definitive rules around send times - it depends on your audience and also the action you want them to take.
For example, if your audience contains mothers of school-age children, and you want them to read a long piece of content, or make a purchase, don’t send it before 9 am on a weekday. If you are looking for feedback, don’t send this email on a Monday morning, when their inbox is likely to be full of pressing emails.
The best advice I can give you when you start out is to pick a time that suits you and test out different send times/ days/. Then look at your analytics, see if moving the send time to the morning or the afternoon makes any difference to your open rate and click rate.
Once you are happy that you’ve found the sweet spot for your audience, try to keep this consistent. You want your newsletter to become something your audience looks forward to receiving, having a regular send time will increase your open rate (which in turn helps your deliverability).
As with all marketing channels there are guidelines, but the best thing to do is to try something, look at the data and refine. What works for one audience and one business, won’t necessarily work for another.
If you’d like some support and accountability with your regular newsletter, I’d love for you to join my monthly newsletter coworking sessions, The Newsletter Network.