By Jayne Schultheis — The ways we get our news have changed a lot over the years, haven’t they?

In the modern content marketing landscape, email newsletters are one of the most impactful ways to communicate with those who would benefit from what your company has to offer. But more than that, they’re an opportunity to share the new and exciting things that are happening with your business. In this article, we’ll look at all the reasons your business can benefit from a newsletter, and how to craft one that works.

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How SEO comes into play

If a newsletter is primarily intended for email distribution, traditional SEO optimization might seem less relevant, but that’s not so. There still are plenty of compelling reasons to incorporate SEO strategies.

Publish a web version of the newsletter

Many email newsletters have a web-based version to help with lead generation. Optimizing this web version for SEO can attract new readers who find the content through search engines, potentially increasing your subscriber base.

If you archive your newsletters on your website, content optimization can help these archived versions climb the search engine rankings. This will give them long-term value and help them continuously attract visitors.

Increased click-through rates

While not traditional SEO, optimizing the subject lines and preview text of your emails with keywords can improve open rates and engagement. This can indirectly boost the performance of your newsletters.

Cross-channel consistency

Maintaining consistency, whether through keywords, topics, or tone, can strengthen your overall content marketing strategy. When all content is aligned to your strategy, it helps your messaging.

Enhanced user experience

Clear, concise headings, well-structured content, and optimized images are SEO techniques that improve readability and user experience in blog posts. They also provide the same benefits in emails. Remember — your audience likely gets a lot of emails in a day. It’s your job to make sure you give your target audience something more. That might be some expert visual storytelling, user-generated content, links to webinars, or video content.

How to write an effective email newsletter

With email newsletters, you won’t need to do extensive keyword research like you would with other kinds of content creation and blogging. But you’ll still need to do some background work beforehand.

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1. Know your audience

If you’re in the businesses of B2B content marketing, then you would craft your newsletter differently than if you’re doing B2C content marketing. If you haven’t determined the buyer personas for your market or done some extensive market research on your target audience, now’s the time. Your newsletter is written for those potential customers, and it should show them your expertise.

2. Set clear goals

Know what you want to achieve with your content distribution. Do you want to increase website traffic? Boost sales? Build brand awareness or loyalty? Use analytics to measure the success of your newsletter against these goals.

3. Craft compelling content

From the very beginning of your process, your task is to catch and hold your audience’s attention. That starts with the subject line. It should be catchy and intriguing — enticing recipients to open the email. The newsletter itself should be content that solves problems, offers insights, gives updates, or entertains. You may want to include industry news, tips, case studies, or success stories.

Since you have only a brief window to keep grab your audience, the writing needs to be clear and concise. Unnecessary fluff or dry, industry jargon might give your newsletter a one-way ticket to the virtual trash bin.

Personalization is another way to grab your audience through an email newsletter. According to Zippia, the open rate for email rises by 50% when subject lines are personalized. Many content management systems enable you to add personalized greetings or tailored content to the recipient.

4. Design for readability

Use a clean and professional design that aligns with your brand and matches all of your other color schemes and brand elements. Include images, infographics, and videos where appropriate. Mobile-friendliness should be a key concern, too. And for good reason — according to Mobiloud, mobile browsing makes up 58.21% of global internet traffic.

5. Optimize for deliverability

Before you hit “send” on your finished newsletter, do some internal testing. Send the newsletter out to others in your company so they can check for formatting issues and give feedback.

Don’t forget to refresh your understanding and application of email marketing laws and regulations, too. GDPR and CAN-SPAM are two of the most important ones to keep in mind.

6. Foster engagement

A newsletter doesn’t have to be a static document. Even if you’re unable to embed certain elements, you can still include clickable links to polls, surveys, or other parts of your website itself. Encourage readers to reply with their thoughts and suggestions to create a two-way communication channel. Add social media buttons to allow readers to share your content easily and engage with your brand on other platforms.

7. Analyze and adjust

Analytics tools can help you monitor the performance of your newsletters. Google Analytics can help with monitoring if you’ve published the newsletter on your website. But for the email itself, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and many other CRMs have comprehensive ways to check on your KPIs. Pay attention to metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

Once you’ve decided on your KPIs and developed some benchmarks, it’s time to do some A/B Testing. Experiment with different subject lines, content formats, and sending schedules to see what works best. Is there a certain day of the week or time of day in which your target audience is more likely to open your email newsletter? Are there certain subject lines that seem to get more traction?

Let Rellify help you craft and distribute your best newsletter yet

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When it comes to building and implementing a content marketing strategy that includes well-crafted, optimized, relevant email newsletters, Rellify can provide a significant ROI. As an all-in-one content marketing solution, you can research, plan, and write your emails within the platform, all while receiving pointed guidance from both AI and Rellify experts. Ready to find out how Rellify can revolutionize how you do content marketing? Hop on a quick call with an expert today for a demo of your customized Relliverse™ and a free quote!

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