Does your email newsletter have a low open rate? Are you unsure if it’s driving any enquiries or sales at all? Many business owners are wasting their time and effort sending out email newsletters because they don’t understand how to use them effectively to generate enquiries and orders. Here are the 2 simple mistakes that could be costing you leads and orders:
1. Your newsletter heading and opening isn’t compelling people to read on
Most of us are bombarded with emails and the first thing we do is delete as many as we can. That includes spam, and anything we don’t need to respond to – like email newsletters. Why don’t we just unsubscribe? Because we don’t want to miss anything we want to know about. Which means that if we spot something interesting in a newsletter, we will take a look. However, you have only about a second or so to capture our interest because our finger is rapidly tapping away on the delete button, almost on automatic pilot.
FIX: Ensure your headlines generate interest. List the items included in your newsletter at the top – if you have 5 headings visible, you have 5 chances to peak people’s curiosity. Conversely, if you open with an introduction, and it’s not clear what lies ahead, then even if further down there is a special offer or a link to an interesting article on your website, many recipients will never know what they missed.
2. Don’t waste your content by including entire articles in your newsletter
The aim of a business newsletter is usually to generate enquiries and orders. If you want people to move from your newsletter to your website for further information, including complete articles will sabotage your efforts.
FIX: Rather than include entire articles, include short summaries highlighting the problems or matters of interest that your articles address, and encourage readers to click a link in each article to read the full articles on your website. The other benefit of this strategy is that it can increase engagement levels on a website, and even prompt sharing of your content on social media.
Entrepreneur Dale Beaumont discusses these and other newsletter issues in this video, and goes into a little more depth on the benefits of putting content on your blog instead of into your newsletter.
