Newsletters can be a huge win or a painful loss. It is important to think about your audience and not end up in the junk file quickly. Entertaining is a big part of retaining your newsletter audience.

In a world of clutter and crappy content, you need to simplify and take away. Grab your red pens and let's get into what you can do to have a successful newsletter strategy.

10 Things to Stop Doing to Have a Successful Newsletter:

1. Boring Subject Lines

The subject is the first thing your audience sees. If you choose to have a subject like "November Newsletter," you can expect to go right to the trash. This boring subject line might even land you an unsubscribe if you bore over and over each month.

We are all busy. If you are like me, and I am sure you are, you get a million unsolicited emails a day along with the busy work emails you need to attend to. Your subject line needs to be attractive, interesting, and at least give a hint into the content expected.

Emojis are cool and a straightforward way to get the message in a small space but overdoing it here will get you a quick click to trash too.

Spend some time and create a subject line that will entice the reader to want to click into your content. brainstorm to find a winning one liner.

2. Too Many Topics

Keep your content streamlined. Simplify what you cover and go in depth with one thought or goal. Too much will distract and confuse your reader.

There is nothing worse than clicking in to read about something you are interested in and only getting one sentence on that topic while wading through paragraph after paragraph of things you don't care about.

Relevant content is a must. Your reader subscribed to your newsletter for a reason. Keep your audience segmented if you have multiple topics for different funnels. That way you don't send a monthly newsletter to readers who signed up for a cat blog tons of information on hamsters.

3. Too Many Goals

Before you send your newsletter, ask yourself what do I want to gain from this? What is the goal?

Whatever your goal is, stick to one action for your goal of the reader. Are you selling a product? Providing a service? Educating your reader on a specific cause? Stick to one goal and use your content to entice your reader to that end.

Too many calls to action or pushes will confuse your reader and result in you losing their attention. Too many goals equal none attained.

4. Unsegmented Audiences

I touched on this one earlier. It is important to segment your audience and create content specific to each group. This may mean you are spending a bit more time and creating multiple groups of content per email send.

You don't want to lose an audience that would be interested in one of your services or topics by sending irrelevant content to them. For example, we offer a lot of services to our clients. We segment our audience so that a client that is interested in digital marketing doesn't receive constant email blasts about printed materials. They have not shown interest in that topic and most likely would become disinterested in what we have to say if we were not sending content on the subject they subscribed to our newsletter for.

One topic, one goal, with content created for the audience you are sending to.

5. Too Many Calls to Action

One of the most important things to keep in mind when sending email newsletters is that they're already prone to chaos. The more links and calls to action you have, the harder it will be on your audience.

A great way around this problem? Keep things simple by reducing how many links and actions are placed throughout the newsletter. Remember the same goal? Have your links centered on ONE objective.

6. Overselling

The content of your email should be 90% educational and 10% promotional. If you’re exceeding that 10% limit, it’s time to reevaluate your newsletter strategy.

If all your newsletter does is sell you, it will fail. There needs to be an educational or entertaining aspect to the newsletter, or it won't be read. You want to create content that engages your reader and makes them look forward to the information you will send.

7. Who Cares Content

We have touched on this many times, but it is important, so it gets its own number. RELEVANT CONTENT...

Make sure your content is something the reader will want to spend time on. "Who Cares" content is boring and has no purpose.

We all love to learn something new, or hear something interesting that happened to someone else, laugh at something funny. Entertain, Educate or Update. These are the three things that you should consider in your newsletter.

8. Blah Images

Spend some time, and yes probably money, on images that will interest the audience. Original images of you or your team are great too as long as they aren't bad quality. Not everyone can afford professional photographers, but if you take time and pay attention to your image as you are taking it, the world as a whole is used to "real" pictures.

Stock photography is fine as well, just put some time and effort into finding images relevant to the topic of your newsletter. Search for imagery that hasn't been overused and make sure you have a license to use it.

9. Why So Serious?

You get more reaction and conversion when you get a reaction and entertain your audience. There are some topics that have to remain serious or somber, but for the most part adding in a joke or funny meme to entertain the reader is a good strategy.

For a newsletter to be successful you want to keep your reader interested from send to send. Keep them wanting more and make sure they look forward to receiving your email in their inbox. This is very important for all of your email marketing efforts.

Have fun and leave serious to the accountant.

10. Don't Write a Book

While newsletters are typically longer than branded emails you send out, there is no need to write a book. No one is going to read large blocks of content.

Attention spans are shorter these days and especially when it comes to receiving information or media. Break up large bits of information with entertaining blurbs or attractive images and try to convert large sections of content to video. Video converts 79% more than written text.

I hope these tips help you to create more engaging newsletters that keep your readers involved and interested. When in doubt it is always best to reach out to the professionals. The appearance of your newsletter is as important as the information you are trying to convey.

If you find yourself lost when it comes to any of your digital strategies, including your email marketing, feel free to give us a call. We are always here to help!