The newsletter is an excellent way to create strong links with your audience.
Too often underestimated, it is one of the most effective acquisition channels.
Unlike an advertisement on a website, prospects or customers have explicitly given their consent to receive information about your company or brand by email.
That’s why it’s essential to create a newsletter. On the one hand, to keep your visitors loyal, but also to generate more leads and online sales.
Find in this article the different steps and the best tools to create a newsletter simply by using artificial intelligence.
30sec summary:
– The newsletter allows reinforcing the link between prospects and customers of a company
– Very good tools allow formatting and automate the sending easily
– Thanks to artificial intelligence, content creation has become much faster
Creating a newsletter is one of the best ways to build customer loyalty.
It is a tool that allows you to communicate on the latest news, but also the newsletter allows you to “educate” your audience on the various themes related to your business.
Strengthen relationships with customers
The newsletter is not only a means of promotion, it is an excellent opportunity to build strong links with your customers, but also with your prospects.
Of course, a well-constructed newsletter generates traffic to your website.
Indeed, if you manage to attract the attention and curiosity of your readers, they will click on the links present in your newsletter to consult the additional information present on your site.
The main objective of the newsletter is to find the right balance and give a preview (teaser) of a relevant content for your audience without providing the full article.
Emails that are too long become rapidly boring and are quickly ignored.
An added value for the notoriety
The newsletter is also a great way to increase the awareness of your brand or your company. Positioning yourself as an expert in a specific field and communicating your knowledge is a very good method.
Many brands that excel at creating a newsletter use their expertise to enhance their reputation. For example, “Build in public” or “Use cases” are part of the content that works best.
An engaged audience is an audience that recognizes itself in a brand’s communication.
That’s why it is important to communicate with them as frequently as possible. Creating a newsletter is a very good way.
In order for your newsletter to be read, the structure must be simple, and the content must be quickly understandable.
To do this, you can set up different steps to standardize and optimize the writing of your newsletter.
1. Define the objectives and the target
You must first define the objective of your newsletter and to whom it is addressed. Prospects, customers, suppliers, each of these audiences have different expectations and needs.
Make sure to segment each of them to offer the best possible user experience. Also, you need to establish the objective(s) of the newsletter: traffic, leads, revenue, cross-selling, up-selling, engagement on social networks?
Each of these goals can be reinforced with your newsletter. However, it is important to set a maximum of one to two goals per mailing.
2. Choose the themes and content
Then, you have to define the content that appears in the email. A good practice: the newsletter starts with an editorial part based on a precise theme related to your activity.
You can give your point of view on a specific news item, or simply create interest among your audience by telling a specific fact or experience.
The body of the email: we can make a summary of articles from the website or create informational or educational content directly related to your business or your services.
3. Avoiding promotions
Note that the promotion part should not exceed 20% of the total content of the email.
You can highlight a special offer or a specific service without creating advertising emails.
The email should be entertaining, inspiring or informative, if you only highlight your products or services, your newsletter will very quickly end up as spam.
3. Creating an editorial calendar
To avoid repetition and promote the regularity of your newsletter, you must set up an editorial calendar.
It allows you to plan in advance and over several months all the newsletters that you will send to your audience.
The creation of content can be delegated and the sending of the newsletter is scheduled in advance.
Note that seasonality and audience type (professional or personal) must be considered.
These elements have a direct influence on the day and time of sending, as well as on the editorial content.
4. Design and layout
For your newsletter to be readable by your audience, the design must be neat.
Favour a clean layout and avoid integrating too many images in the body of the newsletter.
A too heavy email can again very quickly land in the spam folder.
I recommend you to use templates for the layout of the newsletter. This way, the different sizes of each element are standardized. Make it a point to test your newsletter design on different devices.
Most emails are read on a smartphone. Make sure that the images are the right size and that the text is as airy as possible.
5. Build and segment the subscriber list
To have an optimal mailing list, I advise you to collect emails and segment your lists.
A first segmentation consists in differentiating customers from prospects. You can also create a list of your suppliers and partners (access to a B2B communication).
Finally, you can create advanced lists. For example, users who have not made a purchase in a while.
Each of these lists is composed of subscribers with different expectations in terms of content. It is up to you to personalize the body of your emails to generate interest in your newsletter.
Basically, a loyal customer does not need to receive an email that presents the features of a product they already own.
Likewise, talking about advanced features of a service or product to someone new to your brand will not be very effective.
6. Measure and optimize performance
“You can only optimize what you measure”. This is a fundamental element in the implementation of the newsletter.
Measuring interactions related to the opening, reading, and click rate of the newsletter then allows you to optimize your strategy.
The main elements to measure are:
- The deliverability rate, which corresponds to the percentage of newsletters arriving in the inbox of your audience.
- The open rate, which represents the ratio between the number of emails received and the number of emails opened.
- The conversion rate related to the email opened and the number of interactions (clicks) in the continuum.
- The number of visits generated on your site
- The number of conversions generated after visiting your site.
Once all these interaction measures are in place, you can test different versions of emails or templates (A/B tests) and optimize your newsletter.
The use of artificial intelligence is a real revolution in digital. From now on, it is possible to create quality content quite quickly.
From your editorial calendar, you can use AI to generate the structure of a newsletter.
A. Automatic content generation
Very often, the newsletter contains a summary of the latest articles on a site and the company’s activities.
However, the creation of a newsletter is first and foremost a tool to communicate your expertise in your industry.
Artificial intelligence can summarize content already posted online and bring a new angle on the subject.
Thus, you can very quickly create newsletter paragraphs that will repeat the main lines of articles already published on your site.
You will avoid copy and paste by having a different approach depending on your audience.
AI also allows you to create newsletter titles (email subject) very easily.
Depending on the prompt, you can request several versions of catchy headlines. This is to optimize the open rate of your emails.
B. Advanced customization
Artificial Intelligence can also allow you to personalize your newsletters according to your segments and subscriber lists.
You may well be inspired by the recommendations that tools like ChatGPT can give you, depending on the audience you want to target.
For example, you can ask:
- “How to create a Newsletter and present [the topic] for this [type of audience]”
- “What are the major points to mention in a newsletter in relation to [the topic] that is addressed to a [certain type of audience]”
C. Optimization of newsletter mailings
You can also identify the best times to send your newsletters.
The AI can analyze the performance of different newsletters and provide you with the ideal day and time to send your newsletter according to the subject and the targeted audience.
Also, the frequency of newsletters can be adjusted based on subscriber interactions.
Emailing has been regulated by the RGPD since May 25, 2018. A new law will come into force in Switzerland from September 1, 2023.
A. Privacy and Data Protection Rules (GDPR)
The GDPR was put in place to protect the personal data of website visitors.
When we collect the email address of visitors to a site, they must be informed that we store their emails on a server. They must also be informed about the use of their data (Analytics, marketing, sales, newsletters, etc.)
B. Responsible mailing practices (opt-in, unsubscribe)
As newsletters are part of marketing activities, it is imperative to have the user’s agreement that we can send him emails. This is usually a checkbox when they are filling out the form.
When a user wishes to unsubscribe to your newsletter, it is mandatory to give him the possibility to do so and to delete him from the list to which he belongs.
C. Avoid spam and respect authentication standards
Consent is mandatory for any type of communication (newsletter) with one of your visitors. It is forbidden to email a user if he hasn’t explicitly given you his consent.
Finally, it must be able to leave a list at any time through an interface or simply by emailing you.
Conclusion
There are many benefits to setting up newsletters for most companies that want to grow their business online.
By sending a newsletter on a regular basis, you can build loyalty among your users and strengthen the link with your audience. This will generate more traffic, leads, and sales through your website.
Different steps need to be taken to make sure you create an effective newsletter. From defining your objectives, theme, and content to setting up an editorial calendar.
Artificial intelligence now plays a key role in digital marketing. It allows you to simplify the creation of content and to easily personalize all your emails.
It also offers the possibility to optimize your mailings based on the performance and interactions of your subscribers.
Finally, don’t forget to comply with the RGPD and to respect the different legislations of the countries in which you have a digital activity.
If you want to receive my newsletter, don’t hesitate to subscribe!
Finally, contact me if you want to talk about your digital marketing strategy for your company. I will be happy to discuss your projects (newsletters and others) and establish together solutions adapted to your needs!
I’m a digital marketing consultant with 20 years of experience in digital growth in Switzerland.
I assist small and medium-sized businesses in enhancing their online presence and generating more leads.
Based on research and data-driven approach, I create digital marketing strategies and effectively implements them.
I also train marketers in SEO, SEA (Online Advertising), and Web analytics to enhance their skills.