writing tip

What do you want your newsletter to accomplish? This should be the first question you ask yourself before you start writing. If you don’t know the answer to this, how will your subscribers know what to do? Here are some common goals for email newsletters:

• drive sales
• increase social media presence
• download an e-book
• drive traffic to a landing page
• promote a new product or service There are tons of other goals your company might have. But if you’re struggling, use these to get started in the right direction. Pick one and go with it. Trying to jam all these into one message is complicated and will confuse your audience. Here’s a great example of a newsletter with a simple goal from Litmus: The goal of this newsletter is clearly to increase clicks to improve their engagement rates. Rather than just writing a lengthy article about the pros and cons of single vs. double opt-in landing pages, they give their subscribers an option. They’ll get different content based on which CTA button gets clicked. You can use a similar strategy in your newsletter, even if you don’t want to be as direct. First, introduce your goal with the headline or opening statements. Then, discuss it in greater detail throughout the message by mentioning it once or twice. Finally, end with a strong call to action like in the example above. Emphasize it. Don’t make it ambiguous. The customer should have a clear direction of what action to take after reading your newsletter.