Investing your time into your newsletter campaign is rewarding unless you know how to use it for your benefit. It definitely takes a lot of effort and dedication. You don’t want your newsletter turn into another spam message, that’s why you need it to be different. There could be all sorts of reasons for you to start your newsletter campaign. It can help you in driving more traffic to your website, reinforcing your brand and getting more profit from advertising.

You need to diversify your means of communication. Facebook and Twitter are great, but sometimes your audience might be lost in the endless flow of information.

A lot of people use Facebook and of course you should have a Facebook page of your brand. However, you should not forget that Facebook filters newsfeeds in such a manner that your audience might simply miss your updates. The same logic applies to Twitter. Users are overwhelmed with the incredible flow of information and it becomes really hard to deliver your message. That is why you need to work on your newsletter. Newsletter can become a personalized tool to connect with your audience.

Why Email Newsletters?

It might seem a bit outdated yet newsletters remain being effective if you know how to use them properly.

• It Is about Loyalty

You send your newsletter only when you have something important to say.  Your customers trust you and would like to receive something exclusive that’s why you don’t want to undermine their trust.

• Credibility and Trust

You need to put an effort into your newsletters so it would be relevant to your customers. Know your audience and know what people are expecting from you.

How to Use your Newsletter:

First of all you need to work on your email database. Try collecting emails through your website, so only people who are really interested in your product will leave their emails.

• Promote unique products and insider tips from your blog;
• Be consistent, send out your newsletter at least once a month. Avoid sending your newsletters if you don’t have much to say. Use the same language you use on your blog;
• Provide some value to your supporters: original content, don’t just copy information from your blog/website;
• Know your audience: what they want and what they are looking for;
• Don’t use plain text in your newsletter. Play with the font, colors, images, symbols, layout, etc.;
• Your subject lines should be catchy and creative so that people would have a desire to open it;
• Remember that news placed on top of the newsletter will get more attention;
• Offer some limited deals on your products and make your audience feel that it’s worth being on the newsletter list

How to know if it works?

It is important to know if your technique is working or not. That is why you should keep track of some basic statistics in order to know what to improve and what to keep.

You can use various tools to track the effect of your newsletter. Programs like Aweber and Get Response allow you to see the statistics of your newsletter campaign. For example you can see how many people opened your newsletter and how many people clicked on the links. This way you will be able to see what topics are popular and what you can improve.

This is a guest post by Andras, an occasional guest-blogger and a full-time online marketing consultant. He currently works for Jangomail, a great mass email service provider.