Blog

B2B Newsletters top of the pile for customer engagement

It’s fact, Newsletters have been around for a long time. Why? Because they are a successful means of helping businesses communicate with their customers, but what makes them successful?

Even though Newsletters are one of the most common marketing tools, they are actually one of the hardest to get right.

5.5 rules for creating successful B2B Newsletters

1.     Frequency

“How often should we send out an Newsletter?” That’s one of the most frequently asked questions we get. The answer is simple, as often as is dictated by the content you have to communicate. That might be several times a day if your business is similar to Amazon’s. for most B2B companies, however, you will probably be looking at either monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly.

2.     Educational vs Promotional

Successful Newsletters are those which provide valuable information to the recipient. That means a significantly higher proportion of your content needs to be educational. People don’t like to be sold, but they do like to be given a reason to buy. Tread lightly and build trust.

3.     Create ‘Subject’ lines that rock

The ‘Subject’ line is the most important part of the Newsletter. Why? Because it is the main factor which will encourage the recipient to open or trash your email. There are lots of Dos and Don’ts with ‘Subject’ lines, but the best way to see what works is to test various approaches. Try including the recipient’s name in the subject line and make the benefit obvious. Then carefully check for spam words that could consign your Newsletter to the Junk file.

4.     Max the ‘From’ line

The other information that can influence the opening of your email is the ‘From’ line. It’s all about creating trust. You need to make sure that if you are sending it out via a third party email platform the ‘From’ address is ‘masked’ to look like it comes from you. Why? Because a name your customer or prospect trusts and respects will encourage them to open the email.

5.     Simple, clear design

If you have done the ground work well, your email will be opened, but once that happens you have very little time to encourage recipients to read it. Clear design and strong copy will help you coerce people to read the newsletter.

5.5   Learn from the reporting

Any email platform worth its salt will give you access to live online reporting which will give you valuable information about open rates, click-throughs, heat maps and much, much more. This data will help you hone your future email campaigns as well as provide sales leads to follow up.
If you’d like help creating email campaigns that work, give Alan Myers a call on 0116 278 7788 or drop him an email…