Formatting Your Monthly Newsletter

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Offering exclusive content like a weekly or monthly newsletter helps attract more subscribers. But while content remains king, how you present information matters too. People are more likely to subscribe to a newsletter and read your exclusive content if it is formatted thoughtfully. You won't get people hooked on your content if you only send a few lines of text weekly or monthly. In this guide, we're outlining tips that will help you piece together a truly outstanding newsletter that people would love to read! 

Reasons to Create Newsletters

What makes a newsletter great, and how can you use it to grow your business? 

Newsletters can be leveraged in so many ways. Use it to present information regularly so your business stays in the minds of your target audience. 

Sending out newsletters is a great way to know more about your ideal client. You'll be able to determine the demographics of your most engaged readers by checking their personal details. These infos can be used to market to your most loyal clients, like offering special sales exclusively to subscribers or a small incentive after a second purchase. 

You can also use your mailing list for future promotions, like flash sales, holiday specials, and limited-time promos. 

Newsletter content is personal and targeted. People who subscribe to a monthly or weekly newsletter are already eager to know more about your business and what you have to offer. It only takes a little push to get subscribers to click that buy button. 

These are just some of the many benefits of a newsletter. Of course, design matters a lot. How you format and execute the newsletter will affect the effectiveness and success of your marketing campaign. Below are the 3 crucial factors to consider when designing a newsletter:

3 Factors to Consider When Formatting Your Newsletter

What makes a newsletter engaging? What makes readers want to click on it once they see a newsletter in their inbox?

A newsletter should be relevant – it should be interesting and provide value to the reader. You wouldn't want to send a newsletter that you wouldn't want to read yourself. 

Relevance

Covers topics that subscribers genuinely care about

Interesting

Content should delight or entertain readers

Value

Readers must learn something useful from the newsletter

While the end goal is to generate leads, promote your business, and gain more sales, newsletters shouldn't be used to push a product. It should inform people, it should provide value, and the topics should cover everything that your target audience finds interesting otherwise, people won't click on it. 

How to Format a Newsletter

Whether you're planning on a weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly newsletter, here's a step-by-step guide on the newsletter's content and structure: 

Define a Content Workflow

The most important part of a newsletter is the content. You need targeted, valuable content to present in a newsletter. Think about the topics that get a lot of clicks on your website and see what you can incorporate into your newsletter. 

Also, think about the frequency of the newsletter. Would you like to send a newsletter on a weekly or monthly basis? What apps will you use for sending the newsletter out? What service will you use to format your newsletter design? Everything has to be planned out in a workflow, so the tasks are much easier to handle.

Create and Perfect the Draft

If you've been blogging for a while, you have a lot of material to work with. You can use your blog articles, testimonials, social media posts, videos, and images to create newsletter content. You can work on the content yourself or hire a writer to prepare the materials for you. 

The writing must be precise and punchy to boost its readability and keep the content simple and straightforward. Not everyone has time to read a 5-page newsletter. 

After creating a draft, proofread and fact-check it, then revise it until you are satisfied with the final draft. 

Create a List of Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines

After the final draft of the newsletter has been completed, it's time to list some attention-grabbing subject lines to make your newsletter stand out in the subscribers' inboxes. Have fun experimenting with different subject lines, even adding some emojis to add cheekiness and get people to open the newsletter. 

What you want to avoid is misleading your readers. Avoid click-bait at all cost!

Create the Structure of the Newsletter

While you can hire a professional graphic designer to create a newsletter design, this can be done on your own using paid services like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Flodesk, Aweber, or GetResponse. Some of the best newsletter builders include Kajabi, a service that lets you create all kinds of content. 

But if you'd rather create the newsletter design on your own, we suggest giving Canva a try. Canva is free, and it offers dozens of newsletter templates to choose from. These templates are 100% customizable and optimized for small and big screens. Simply copy and paste your newsletter content, add your branding elements, and hit save. 

Plan the Publishing Schedule for Optimal Engagement

Once the newsletter is ready, you must figure out the best time to publish it for maximum exposure. You'll need to check the analytics to do this, but research shows that Tuesday has the highest open rates for newsletters. That said, it's still a popular day for opt-outs or unsubscribes. Thursday is also a great day for sending out newsletters. 

Avoid sending out emails on the weekends, Friday to Sunday, because most people are not in the mood to sit in front of the computer reading a newsletter. Monday should also be avoided because it's generally a hectic day, being the start of the work week. 

Check your email engagement rates, see what day of the work week where subscribers are more active and start from there. Email automation software is a great way to automate this task. Just key in the schedule for the publishing and the newsletters will be sent out to your subscribers at the time and date you choose. 

Flodesk is an excellent service for creating email marketing automations. With this tool, you can create workflows and set publishing times in seconds. The service also comes with various features apart from sending out on-brand marketing messages. 

Readers can be fickle, and many will opt out of their subscription if you're not presenting your newsletter content properly. That's why it's essential to focus on valuable content and use the right tools to present your newsletter in the most attractive way possible. We hope that with this guide, we've inspired you to take more time perfecting your newsletter content and design to attract more subscribers.

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