Make Your Newsletter (More) Awesome: 5 (More) Things You Can Implement Right Now

A few years ago, we put together our 5 best tips for creating a newsletter that absolutely rocked. This year, we want to build on that list and give you five more strategies/tips you can implement today to rock out your newsletter some more.

You can check out the original post here, but the five tips boiled down to this:

1. Local content will have the highest engagment.
2. Breaking up the newsletter into bite-sized chunks is more digestible for your readers.
3. Using the data provided in the email reports will help you improve your newsletter content.
4. Subject lines are just as important (if not more) than the body.
5. Video rocks and people respond well to it.

A wise entreprenuer by the name of Darren Rowse once said, "Content isn't king. Usefulness is." This is going to be our focus of the next five tips to make your newsletter (more) awesome.

6. Clean up your lists.

Remove the people who have not opened your newsletter in the last six months from your newsletter list. Put these people on a separate list so that you only hit them with newsletters every six to eight months. You should only talk to people who are willing to listen. In this case "talking" is sending your newsletter, and "listening" is people who are opening and engaging with the newsletter.

Two things happen when you clean up your lists. First, your email deliverability will increase. The email servers of your recipients will view your incoming messages as "more legit" when you have a higher rate of enagement (more opens, clicks, etc.). And secondly, your email reports inside of eMerge will be easier to understand. Without all that "dead weight," you will be able to tell what content resonates with your audience. You data will be less skewed, more focused.

• TIP: We don't recommend dropping the non-openers completely. Just reduce the frequency that you send them email or switch them to another campaign of some kind (mail outs, calls, etc.).

7. Be a real person.

This is simple enough. Put your own voice into the newsletters. Here are three examples of real eMerge clients that put their personal spin on their newsletters.

• We have a retired pro-football player turned real estate agent. His entire brand revolves around teamwork and winning together.
• Retired chef turned real estate pro includes their most popular recipes in each newsletter. One month, she forgot to include the recipe and she had clients emailing her and calling her asking about it.
• We have a gentleman that sells recreational property in Kentucky. He puts news about records being broken by the fishermen and hunters in his area.

​It's that simple to put your personality or interests into your business and into your newsletter!

8. Use call-to-actions wisely.

The first point of a newsletter is to be useful! (Remember the quote "Content is not king. Usefulness is.") The second point of a newsletter, especially for newsletters that are trying to sell a product of service, is to get people back to your website so that your website can do its job. So if you're a real estate agent, you'll want to add a call-to-action after your listing that says, "Click here to schedule a showing." Then you'll want that button to go to a scheduing page, a new email, or the MLS page so they can schedule that showing.

Real estate newsletters typically have "View my website" and "Featured listings" buttons at the top. We know here at eMerge how important it is to have that info at the top of the newsletters. When you take a look at your reports, you will see the items with the most clicks are usually at the top. Keep that in mind and keep call-to-actions back to your website at the top and sprinkle them throughout the newsletter.

9. Know the words that you shouldn't use.

Sometimes it's not exaclty about the "how to" in marketing, it's the "what should I avoid?" In a recent article we wrote, we covered 50 words and phrases you should avoid at all costs in your email subject line. Click here to get the full list!

10. Keep it short and sweet.

At eMerge, we like the "two scroll" rule. If someone has to do more than two full scrolls on their mouse or two full thumb scrolls on their phone, your email is too long!

Two things happen when you make your emails short and sweet. First, your email deliverability will increase. Long emails, especially those chocked full of images, have a harder time being delivered and downloaded to the recipients' inbox. Super long emails are also more likely to get flagged as spam. And secondly, the shorter the email, the better the chance you have of all of the content getting read. Most people are going to open your email, scan for useful information, engage with something they like, and then exit. If you have something important to say and it's six scrolls down on the page, it's very likely not getting read at all.

That sums it up! Another five tips to keep your newsletter awesome!

To view the original article, visit the eMerge blog.