With many companies thinking of alternative ways to market their business to the “stay at home” audience, we’ve been revisiting newsletters.  These can be a vital way to communicate important information and keep your brand in your clients’ thoughts. Here are our top tips.

Building Your Mailing List

One of the most important things to consider when sending out newsletters, is your mailing list.  Make sure you have enough people signed up before making the effort to write that newsletter.

• Website – You can have a pop-up box on your website saying “Sign Up to Our Mailing List and Receive 10% Off Your First Order”
• Facebook – In your Facebook page template select the Sign Up to Newsletter function
• Competition – Run a giveaway on social media where you encourage followers to sign up (ensure you make this explicit)

Newsletter Timing and Frequency

The constant flurry of newsletters into your client’s inbox can be annoying, so make sure you don’t overdo it, send a newsletter when you genuinely have some news or new products to share.  Since the introduction of GDPR it’s now much easier to opt out of receiving a newsletter and it’s also very easy to unsubscribe, meaning you can just receive the ones you are interested in, so now we actually enjoy receiving newsletter as they are a handy way of keeping in touch with local organisations and for industry news.

We would advise picking a date and time when you think your audience would most likely read the newsletters – Friday afternoon perhaps – and stick to it.

Sometimes once a week is just enough to say “we’re here” particularly during lockdown as it’s such a good way to stay in touch.

Newsletter Content

Depending on the frequency of your newsletters, the amount of content may vary.  Currently we are liking newsletters which have one or two pieces of information in them, as we are far more likely to read these straight away.  Those with lots of information will probably need to be sent less frequently and at a time when your audience can read at leisure.

Newsletter Templates

For online newsletters, we are massive fans of MailChimp.  It’s simple to set up an account, add users (do follow their guidelines in order to comply with GDPR), and select a template.  Stick to something simple to start with and remember to send test emails to either yourself or colleague before sending out.