How To Write A Newsletter In 5 Steps

Jan

April 16, 2013 5 mins to read

This post is a 5 step tutorial on how to write a newsletter, that will boost your website traffic and conversion rate. Your mailing list is your capital, so your newsletter has to have great content, to engage your subscribers and to build a relationship based on trust with your subscribers. I will guide you to the process I’m using, when I write my newsletter.

1. The Newsletter Service

How to write a newsletter starts with choosing the best newsletter service for you. In m opinion, there are only two services, which I can recommend. One is Aweber, which is highly spread all over the world and one of the biggest and most reliable newsletter services. Aweber is also recommended by the Internet Business Mastery Academy* which has hundreds of members, who became successful online entrepreneurs. Aweber is very easy to use, but it offers no free plan. It’s not expensive but it has no free plan. I’m not using Aweber, I’m using Mailchimp, because I’m more experienced with it. It offers a free plan up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly newsletters. Comparing the features, there’s no big difference. Both offer HTML templates, variable lists and list segments, RSS feed campaigns and lots more. I recommend to use one of those two, you’ll definitely make no mistake with them.

2. The Topics

But what content do you include in your newsletter? There are lots and lots of sources, though some of them do not obviously appear as those. The best source to direct the subscriber back from your newsletter to your website is to include your latest posts and news in your newsletter. Writing a newsletter is a great way to summarize your last achievements and to present them your subscribers. On this way they’ll see your progress and most importantly you’re establishing yourself as expert in your niche. When you ask yourself how to write a newsletter, keep the content in mind, you’ve already created! Don’t do the work twice, just utilize your content.

Also there are lots of different platforms, from which you can get the trending topics:

3. The Headings

The subject of your newsletter and your headings are very important for the success of your newsletter. Readers a scanning contents and not reading them from top to bottom. So you need to grab the attention of your subscribers and show them the most important text passages (yes, there are less important passages). So how do you get the attention of your subscriber and write headings, that attract your subscribers nearly automatically? There are lots of other websites, which provide great templates for even greater headlines.

As you can see, there are lots of resources available on writing the ‚best‘ newsletter subject and heading. If I tried to extract their contents, I wouldn’t be able to keep them uptodate, so I’m referring you to the direct sources.

4. The Contents

The contents you’re writing in your newsletter must keep the attention of the subscriber. You’re already using great headlines, so make sure, that you’re content can keep up with those. It’s a common way to relate the newsletter to your previous posts on your blog, article directories or any other kinds of platforms. Most times, your subscribers have not read all the posts you published, so it’s a best practice, to summarize your latests contents in your newsletter.

Also you may grab the trending topics of the platforms listed above and write your opinion to those. Is the topic really interesting to your audience or is it just a waste of time? How do you use the newest services for marketing and where do you get your information from?

Remember, that you don’t have to write a novel, just keep it short and simple, so that your subscribers can scan the newsletter for relevant information.

5. Resources

Resources is a great way to provide real value to your subscribers. Which books are you reading? Who is the person you chatted most with last week? Which software do you use and for what purpose? And what blogs or RSS feeds do you follow? Let your audience utilize your resources and recommend valuable information to them. If your recommendations are really relevant for them and stop a pain in their daily life, you’ll get a boost in trust you can’t even imagine.

Also the resources are the part, where you can insert affiliate links into your newsletter, to earn some money. Keep in mind my principles on how to use affiliate links.

I hope, this guide on ‚How to Write a Newsletter‘ helps you in creating valuable newsletters for your subscribers, that boost your site visits and build up trust to your audience. Remember, it’s all about targeting your audience!

* = Affiliate links