When it comes to building your independent publication, email newsletters are the ultimate multi-use tool. Newsletters help publish your journalism relatively easily and inexpensively, build a relationship with your audience, and communicate personally with your readers in a meaningful way. By following these newsletter best practices, your emails can also become a source of audience growth, reader revenue, and ads and sponsorship inventory.
In this blog, we’ll explore the essential aspects of email newsletter best practices, focusing on two key categories: technical best practices (the nuts and bolts of creating and delivering email newsletters) and email newsletter strategies (focusing on the broader goals and approaches behind crafting effective newsletter campaigns).
Technical newsletter best practices
1. Optimize your email structure
Optimizing your email structure in a newsletter is crucial for enhancing readability, engagement and conversion rates. A well-structured email layout or template will ensure clarity and guide recipients through your content effectively. Here are the elements that all newsletters should include:
2. Personalize your emails
If you collect your subscribers’ names, you can include merge tags to personalize newsletter elements like the greeting. Incorporating merge tags in your newsletter creates a tailored experience for each recipient, which boosts engagement and nurtures a sense of connection.
For example, if you’re asking a question, include a merge tag that will fill in their name at the end, like “How many apples a week do you eat, Amy?”.
3. Create a strong subject line
The subject line is the reader’s first impression of your newsletter. Using a strong subject line will significantly boost open rates and engagement.
- Add personalization: Use merge tags to personalize your subject lines with the recipient’s name.
- Be descriptive: If it’s catchy, it’s a bonus. But most importantly, get to the point. Why are you sending this email? What’s the benefit to the reader?
- Keep it short: Keep the length to 30 to 50 characters.
- Use emojis: A best practice is to include a maximum of one emoji per email subject line.
- Test: Some email service providers (ESP) gather data on which subject lines performed the best, but you can dig into the numbers yourself as well. Make note of which subject lines have the highest open rates, and try to identify a common thread.
4. Optimize the preview text/ preheader
Optimizing the preview text or preheader in your newsletter improves readability and encourages the recipient to open it. This works to enhance engagement with concise and enticing snippets of a newsletter’s content.
- Play off your subject line: If it fits with the tone of the newsletter, don’t be afraid to have some fun with this! It could be the punch line to the joke or a pun in your subject line. Or it elaborates on the main topic. You can also allude to a few other stories that are in your newsletter.
- Keep it short: Under 90 characters.
5. Give your readers an effective call-to-action (CTA)
A clear and well-placed CTA in your newsletter will help guide your readers toward the action you want them to take, whether it’s visiting your website or signing up for a webinar.
- Include 1-2 buttons per email: This is also a great way to experiment with a different copy (such as “Let’s talk!” or “Read more!”) to see which one is the most effective.
Important: Revenue campaign emails should only include one CTA so there’s no opportunity to be distracted from the financial ask!
- Embed links in the copy: The more opportunities you create to move your reader from their inbox to your website, the better.
- Put a CTA above the fold: Even if you have the most interesting newsletter in the world, readers lose attention quickly. Make sure there is a clearly labeled button in view when the reader opens the email, especially if you’re running a campaign asking readers for support or feedback.
- Mix it up: Change the button copy for your CTA regularly. If readers see the same one repeatedly, it can turn into a habit not to click.
- Track clicks with UTMs: UTM tracking links are URLs that have pieces of code attached to them (called parameters) that help you track where your website visitors are coming from. For example, if you want to see how many readers of your website’s newest post came from your newsletter, you can use a UTM tracking link. The data is collected by the email service provider and other analytic tools like Google Analytics.
6. Follow the newsletter best practices for images
Optimizing email marketing images, along with adhering to email newsletter design best practices, can make your newsletter more effective, engaging, and accessible.
- Follow the 60/40 rule: Clear and concise text should make up 60 percent of your email, while images should stay below 40 percent.
- Choose the correct image format for your newsletter: PNG, JPG, and GIFs have multiple pros and cons. You can read our format recommendations here.
- Hyperlink your images: Add a link to the images that lead to the article you’re referencing. You’d be surprised how many people will click.
- Use alt text: This is also known as alternative text or alt attributes. Alt text is a brief description of the image that’s displayed when a subscriber can’t view it. It is a critical component of web accessibility, including newsletter design. It holds particular significance for individuals who are reliant on screen readers, making it a fundamental aspect of email accessibility guidelines.
7. Understand email compliance regulations
According to CAN-SPAM (USA) and CASL (Canada), you must include:
- Your company’s physical address: Or another mailing address you can be reached at.
- An unsubscribe or email preferences link: You must honor the unsubscribe request promptly.
- A link to your website’s privacy policy.
As of February 2024, Gmail started new requirements for spam protection. In summary, if you are a bulk sender (any email sender that sends close to 5,000 messages or more to personal Gmail accounts within 24 hours), you will need to authenticate your email, enable easy unsubscription and ensure that you’re sending wanted emails.
Email newsletter strategies
8. Write a great welcome email
A welcome email is the first email your new subscribers will read, so it’s important to make a good first impression. What’s the message that will welcome them to your community?
Our Indie Experts team shares the best practices to keep in mind when figuring out what you’re presenting in that first newsletter. Why does this matter? It can make the difference between a steadily growing email list and an above-average churn rate.
9. Make your newsletter look and feel more personal
Your subscribers’ inboxes are likely flooded every day with multiple newsletters. How do you ensure that yours stands out? The answer lies in a strong, consistent and recognizable email, embodying newsletter best practices. You’ve thought long and hard about your publication’s unique identity and value. Now’s the time to translate that to your newsletter.
Here are 8 recommendations from the Indiegraf team on ways to level up personalization and keep subscribers clicking week after week.
10. Use mini-courses to boost newsletter engagement
What are newsletter courses? Here’s a quick breakdown:
- Evergreen, on-demand email series
- Typically used to tackle deeper dives into a specific subject or issue
- Set number of emails (or text messages) over a fixed number of days/weeks
Indiegraf director of Growth & Impact Joe Lanane explains how to use newsletter courses to increase engagement.
11. Plan an email series
Learn how to school your audience in a good way!
In this article, freelance journalist and The Discourse Nanaimo team lead Lauren Kaljur shares a few email series best practices and breaks down how an email series helped the independent community outlet grow its audience and win over subscribers. The Discourse produced two email series and grew its subscriber base by about 30 percent!
12. Increase your leads for free with newsletter swaps
Various paid lead generation tactics can be used to increase top-of-funnel growth, like launching ads on Meta platforms. But what happens once the budget runs out?
Newsletter swaps can be a great organic growth strategy for publishers open to collaborating with other outlets or organizations. We asked the Indie Experts team to share tried-and-true best practices to get your newsletter swap off the ground and running.
Loved these newsletter best practices resources and want more? The Indiegraf Experts team has the know-how to help your publication’s newsletter thrive. Book a meeting with us today to learn more about our growth services!
