No one can argue with the power of newsletters and how effective they are in getting re-visitors to your blog. Neil Patel stated himself it’s impossible to get 100,000 people to your blog a month without an active email campaign. However, you need to have the right elements in place when sending emails. What good are emails if they don’t get opened and people don’t click on the “call-to-actionâ€? I’ve worked with over 20 people in the last year many of them large business owners. They would often consult me on SEO and effective email marketing. Last year, with “2†of my clients, I sent out 100,000 newsletters over the course of 11 months and learned a few cool things.
Let’s get started…
Duration
When sending emails you have to be careful because sending too many can overwhelm the subscriber. You have to figure out the right frequency and it should depend on the following factors.
- How often you update content.
- How valuable the content.
- The day and time sent during the week.
If you update content daily then send an email every week with a breakdown of the content published last week. This way the subscriber can choose which one they find engaging. Sending emails everyday when you publish might NOT be appealing especially when your content isn’t always up to par. Next,
It’s important to send the breakdown email on a Tuesday since this is still the beginning of the week and people have cleaned out their junk emails normally done on Monday.
Go Mobile
We knew that 44% of people visiting the website were surfing through their mobile phones. Installing Google Analytics in the backend will provide you with device information. This is why it was more important to ensure our newsletters are mobile-friendly. If we didn’t make them mobile compatible then that’s a potential 44% of visitors NOT engaging with our website. The good news is that ESP’s like Aweber.com make it very simple to create mobile-friendly newsletters and even provide you default templates.
We saw an impressive 77% open rate on newsletters sent.
Always Reply
One of my customers wanted feedback so sent out a newsletter asking a simple question: What do you think about our new web design? Many people responded and we made it a point to respond to every email message that came through. We received several emails back acknowledging our replies and they even mentioned they would visit the website more often. The lesson is…
To always reply back to emails your getting in response to newsletters. Many people when they get a reply back will appreciate the effort and this will build loyalty going forward. As a matter of fact, after the 11 month trial, we actually saw an increase in traffic.
Add First Name
This is very important and we doubled our open rates by simply adding a first name. The next time you send out emails it’s important to always include their first name in the subject line. It’s NOT only professional, but builds a level of respect. People also acknowledge messages with their first name because it’s a personal touch. Here’s something else,
Include your domain name when sending messages because it builds brand awareness and people are more incline to open emails from companies they recognize. We split tested both options and doubled our open rates adding first name. When we tested newsletters by adding and removing company URL, the results were very impressive. 20% more people opened newsletters when domain name was included and we attribute this to people simply recognizing us as a reputable source.
Wrapping It Up…
These were the biggest things we learned after sending out 100,000 newsletters. When trying to figure out the right date and time, it will really depend on your niche. However, as a blogger your better off sending on weekdays preferably on Tuesday and Wednesday because weekends people tend to be away from their email. They also want to avoid any contact with work during their time off.