Think Your Newsletter Needs an Overhaul? Here’s Why It Probably Doesn’t (Yet)

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When I sit down with a newsroom or a non-profit for the first time to discuss improving its email strategy, I am typically asked, “I think our newsletter could be a lot better. How much should we prioritize its improvement?”

I’ve worked with some teams that send beautifully designed newsletters, but I’ve worked with far more organizations whose newsletters’ designs won’t appear on Really Good Emails anytime soon.

So my usual answer to that question — “How much should we prioritize improving our newsletter?” — might surprise you: 

It’s not something I’d prioritize if I were you.

The reason isn’t that I don’t care about design or that these teams can’t create a better-looking newsletter. It’s that for most newsrooms and non-profits, their time could be better spent improving just about everything besides the newsletter itself.

I can practically hear you thinking: Dan, shouldn’t you start with the newsletter if you want to improve your newsletter strategy? But here’s how I see it: Growth, monetization, setting up automations like a welcome series, figuring out what metrics to measure — those are all places where your organization can focus and see a more immediate impact. My advice: First build out the structure around your newsletter, and then you can focus on improving the newsletter itself.

Let me walk through those other pieces of the puzzle to help you figure out what you need to prioritize to improve your strategy.

Try new ways to grow your list

I’m amazed by how many orgs still try to grow their list using this one sentence — and only this one sentence — as their call to action (or CTA): “Sign up for our newsletter.”

They’re not explaining the value of their newsletter. They’re not telling readers why it’s something they’ll want in their inbox. They’re not even telling readers how often the newsletter will be sent.

No wonder readers aren’t signing up for your newsletter.

So start by running a survey of your existing newsletter audience and asking them why they read your emails. Make it a multiple-choice question with a few options for them to choose from. (You can use this list of “jobs to be done” as a starting point.) Whichever answer is most popular, use that as the starting point for your new marketing pitch. For instance, if readers say they like your newsletter because it helps them discover something they’d otherwise miss, you can update your copy accordingly: “Never miss important news in your community. Sign up for our newsletter and always be informed about what’s happening near you.”

Then, start testing a few new growth tactics where you can use that marketing language. Make sure to update your landing page — that’s an easy win that will generate long-term returns. Get a sign-up box in your header and footer. And if you’ve never experimented with paid growth, run a few ads on Facebook or Instagram. You don’t have to spend a ton at the start. A modest investment of $25 or $50 a day might be enough to help you learn which types of ads work, and you can always invest more later on when you see those ads start to pay off.

Focus on monetization

However, you bring in revenue from readers — whether through subscriptions, memberships, or donations — most orgs could do a lot more to convert readers to supporters. Many orgs that I talk to have run the same tactics for years; it’s time to start using a new playbook to drive conversions. There are tons of in-newsletter tactics to try, plus one-off emails to send and big campaigns to launch. Over the course of a few months, you should try as many of these tactics as you can.

As for advertising, many of the legacy publishers I work with have only ever run programmatic ads in their newsletter. I have no issue with programmatic ads — tools like LiveIntent and Jeeng can drive significant revenue, particularly for newsletters with big audiences — but it’s also worth exploring other ad opportunities to see if there might be additional revenue out there.

A few ad options I’d consider to start:

• Sell presenting sponsorships for your newsletter — Have a featured sponsor, one who you can promote at the top of the email (“Today’s newsletter is presented by _______”) and then showcase with a native ad in the middle of the email.
• Sell secondary sponsorships — These could be classified ads (75-100 words each) or event listings. A secondary sponsorship could also be a job board highlighting a few relevant jobs in your community. You might sell classifieds or job listings on your website already. Offer the chance to promote these in your newsletter for an additional fee.
• Sell sponsored sections — This could be a recurring section, like a weather forecast or a community calendar presented by a sponsor. These won’t generate as much revenue as the other ad opportunities, but every little bit adds up.

You can keep running programmatic ads as part of your strategy, but see if you can diversify your ad offerings with one or more of these other ad options.

Build out your automations

There are four things that nearly every organization can improve when it comes to automations: 

1.) Your welcome series — Most orgs send at least one welcome email — these days, I meet very few newsrooms or non-profits that send zero emails after someone signs up for their newsletter. But there’s more to add to the series to build relationships with new readers and convert them to supporters.

2.) Your reactivation series — Don’t just let inactive readers linger on your list. Set up a series of emails to win back readers who aren’t engaging with your newsletter, and unsubscribe any readers who don’t open or click on the emails in that series. It’s one of the best things you can do to stay out of the spam folder.

3.) Your post-payment series — When a reader becomes a paying subscriber, member, or donor, are you sending any emails to them? Are you thanking them for their support? Reminding them of what you’ll do with their money? Encouraging subscribers to upgrade to a premium offer or asking one-time donors to give again? Sending a few extra emails after someone makes that initial payment might drive a lot more revenue for your org down the road.

4.) Your renewal series — If you’re not emailing readers around the time that their payment renews, you’re probably leaving revenue on the table. Send these readers a series of emails reminding them that their payment is coming up, thanking them for their support, and telling them about all the good work you’ve done, thanks to their support. Don’t be afraid to use your personal voice in these emails — that can make a difference.

Figure out what metrics to measure — and how to measure them

It pains me when I talk with a newsroom or a non-profit that says the only email metric they consider is open rate. There are many reasons why you should look beyond open rates: They’re not terribly accurate, and they’re also just one data point to help you understand the health of your email strategy. I always look for additional metrics, from clicks to paid conversions to survey feedback, to help me understand how an organization is really doing with its newsletter strategy.

But it’s not enough to pick the metrics — you also need to figure out how you’ll measure them. You probably already get some additional metrics through your email platform and by using a web analytics tool like Google Analytics or Fathom Analytics. If you haven’t set up Google Postmaster to track spam complaints and domain reputation, you should absolutely do that. But you might also want to try a third-party tool to help you get a better handle on these metrics. I like Databox to create visualizations for all your email data and Glueletter to share the latest newsletter reports with your team easily. 

What if you’ve done all of the tasks above?

If you’ve already addressed the ideas mentioned in this article, you can absolutely focus on improving the newsletter’s content and design and building out your newsletter team. You’ll have no shortage of things to test to make the newsletter as good as possible for readers.

And there’s no harm in tackling newsletter improvements earlier in the process. In some scenarios, I’ll encourage a team to prioritize that — for instance, if its existing design is so poor that the email is unreadable on a mobile device or inaccessible to most users. In those situations, you have to fix the newsletter first. It doesn’t matter how good your content, growth, or monetization strategy is if your newsletters aren’t readable.

But in many cases, the newsletter you have right now is good enough. Yes, you’ll want to improve it in the long run, but you may want to direct your energy towards other priorities that will make your email strategy a whole lot better today.

Thanks to our sponsor
The stories you’re reading on inboxcollective.com are made possible thanks to the generous support of our summer sponsor, GetResponse. They’re an email marketing and automation platform with comprehensive, affordable, and easy-to-use tools to grow, engage, and convert your audience. If you’re looking for a platform with powerful automation and monetization tools, give GetResponse a try.