If you’re lucky enough to be on the Redwood mailing list, you’ve probably received a few of our newsletters via email. It’s one of the ways we keep our current contacts current, give our loyal customers special offers, and keep people up-to-date on what’s going on with our company and our industry.
Email newsletters are an easy, useful marketing tool. If you need a boost in your brand recognition, I highly recommend that you try some email marketing.
Build Your Email Marketing Campaign
Step 1: Choose your service
There are a lot of web-based platforms to help launch your email campaign. We use Constant Contact, but MailChimp is also good options. Find the one that fits your company best!
Step 2: Start a list of contacts
Maybe you’re the type of person who has trouble keeping all your contact information organized – that’s OK! Take whatever email addresses you know (limited to professional contacts), enter those into your mailing list, and make sure that from now on you enter in every single business card you receive.
Step 3: Have a sign-up form
Ask your web designer to add a page on your site that allows you to collect email data to add to your mailing list.
Step 4: Know your mission
Are you out to ask questions, gather data, and spark an interaction? Or is your aim to educate your contacts about your business/industry? Maybe you’d like to announce a new product/service? Build your message around this.
Step 5: Keep it simple
Your newsletter should have an attention-grabbing headline, with the main article being no more than 3 short paragraphs. Or you can feature multiple articles (say, from your blog) by including each headline/title, the first 2 sentences, and a link to the rest of the article (the blog post). Don’t include 27 links in a side column, either – think about your mission and tailor your links to that. No one wants to get “homework” in their email – they won’t read it. Simplicity gets your message heard.
Step 6: Track everything
Email newsletter services offer ways to monitor your results by logging in to check your “opens” and “click-throughs” – how many people have actually read your email, and how many have actually clicked a link. See what works for your contact list. Got a low click-through on the last email? Change tactics – jazz up the title of the email, or include more pictures, etc. – then track those results and find a working strategy.
