By Deborah Sweeney

The e-newsletter. Sometimes you open it and read a couple of articles inside, other times you delete it without a second glance. More often than not, you’re choosing the latter of the two options and usually it’s for the same reasons. The subject header wasn’t engaging. You’ve read a couple of issues in the past and the content was so-so. Maybe the design isn’t all that good either or the font could be hard to read. It could even be for a reason as simple as arriving into your inbox too early in the morning on a Monday.

There’s nothing as disappointing as logging into your Constant Contact account (or any other newsletter template service that you use) and seeing that hardly anyone subscribed on your mailing list opened the letter that you put a lot of time into. But while you might have put plenty of time into your email newsletter, you probably missed out on rubbing a little extra effort into the following areas. Brush up on your creativity and showcase what your company does best by focusing on the following must-haves to guarantee solid newsletter reads and opens.

1) Catchy Subject Header

The key to any newsletter that gets clicked to open is its subject header. Before seeing any images or sale offers, this is the first thing you’ll read that will tell you more about what’s inside. I recommend going above the standard “May Newsletter for XYZ Company” and asking a question that readers will be intrigued by and click to see if the answer is inside (which it should be!). A topical headline is usually another great lock, just be sure that the newsletter itself goes out the day of said headline to avoid looking like old news fast.

2) Strong Written Content

Which do you feel like you learn more from, a guest blog post that can tell you about the 10 most effective pinboards on Pinterest and what makes them that way or a big advertisement for Pinterest sprayed across the middle of your newsletter? What if it were one guest blog post on Pinterest and 3 smaller advertisements? The answer is going to be the guest blog post because it’s meaty. You can learn something from it that you might not have known before and teaching your subscribers new things is exactly why they subscribed to your newsletter in the first place. When creating an e-newsletter, content will be your driving force to getting and keeping longtime readers so be sure that what you include is specific to the audience reading and on topics they’re interested in as well as can be able to hold interest.

3) Include Video

Some mornings it’s nice to just sit back with your coffee and watch a video instead of diving directly into a long paragraph to read. Whenever you can, include a video into your e-newsletter. It can be from your company or yourself or maybe even a guest vlog post! Be sure the link to the video works before mailing it off though.

4) Color + Sharp Design

You may have a selection of templates to work with but that doesn’t mean that you can’t mix it up! I personally like mixing traditional black and gray font coloring with bold and vibrant background colors and including a banner image at the top of the page that coordinates with the season. Makes it festive and fun to read AND look at!

5) Take It Easy on the Font Size!

We get it, you have a lot of extra news this month to tell us. But you don’t have to cram it all in so small we need a magnifying glass to read the articles or use 50 million exclamation points to convey your excitement. Use a font size that most people can easily read in either 11 or 12. And while I’m at it, stick to a font that isn’t headache inducing. Arial and Times New Roman, yes. Wingdings, no.

Deborah Sweeney is the CEO of MyCorporation, an online filing services company that specializes in incorporations and LLCs. Find her online at mycorporation.com/blog and on Twitter @deborahsweeney.

No related posts.

Tags: Business, Deborah Sweeney, e-newsletter, Email, Email Marketing, Entrepreneur, Giveaways, Marketing, Mompreneur, Newsletter, The Work at Home Woman