B2B email marketing is a key component of your organization’s marketing strategy. Why is email so important? 77% of B2B companies use an email marketing newsletter and 79% find email to be the most successful channel to distribute their content. As more and more organizations use email to reach audiences, it becomes more and more important to ensure your email newsletters are optimized for success. If there are things you need to know about newsletters, we have all the tips below to guide you to create a newsletter that is suitable for your audience.
Tip #1: Educate Your Audience
The main objective of B2B email marketing newsletters is to educate your audience. Those in various industries of the B2B world are most likely professionals and they want to read helpful tips, strategies, insights and more that can advance their knowledge. It is your organization’s responsibility to provide these tips and insights in an effective and engaging manner. The content you provide in your email marketing newsletters, blogs, articles and/or guides, is a great way to provide information to your audience. Newsletters also act as a way to distribute your content to a broader audience when they are shared. Any way that you can educate an audience with your content is something that should be taken advantage of.
Tip #2: Have a Branded, Consistent Design
The design of your newsletter is important and largely determined by your branding and style guide elements. This guide outlines the colors, fonts and imagery that are used by your organization. It serves as the source of truth for branding and allows for consistency across company assets or elements such as your website and content. When designing your template or outline for the newsletter, keep the brand identity guidelines in mind and consider these questions.
- What colors should you use for the headers and font?
- What font will you use?
- Where should you place your logo?
- What other design elements should you include?
- What type images or visuals should you use?
- These questions are important for establishing a consistent, on-brand email newsletter.
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Tip #3: Include Third-Party Content
While your newsletter should primarily be driven by original content, you can always include third-party content. Doing this can add credible content to what you are already providing. If you plan to go this route, evaluate popular sources in your industry and establish which ones are most credible and relevant to your audience. By your organization featuring content, this can be a way to establish relationships with these sources. They might let you include some of your content in their next newsletter or email. Broadening, and increasing, the reach of your content is beneficial in both the short-term and the long-term in driving more awareness and leads.
Tip #4: Establish a Content Flow
How you set up the content to flow in your newsletter matters. You do not want the information to be spread out awkwardly, crowded in certain places or unreadable. When readers read through your newsletter, they want to be able to understand it clearly. Messaging should be consistent and reflective of your brand. What is the best way to set up your newsletter? Consider these points.
- Have an overview and/or the most important content near the top. This can grab their attention, prepare them for what is to come and carry them through the rest of the content.
- Make sure any important announcements, news or awards are highlighted.
- Provide consistency in the “sections” of the newsletter and ensure the transition from section-to-section flows easily. Once you decide on a flow of the first email marketing newsletter, make sure that it is consistent throughout all newsletters you send.
- If you’re looking for inspiration on how newsletters should flow, check out these examples.
Tip #5: Create a Schedule
When should your organization be sending newsletters? Should it be weekly, bi-weekly or maybe even quarterly? What time of day should you be sending them? There are a lot of questions to consider when creating the schedule for your newsletter sends. Because your newsletter is put together with the content that you create, it depends on how much content you and your team are creating. If you feel that you can create enough content to distribute a monthly newsletter, then do that. If you find that it would be more ideal to content over time and distribute it quarterly, that works as well. The most important thing is committing to a schedule and maintaining it. Create a calendar that outlines what will be sent and when and hold yourself and your team accountable for the email marketing initiatives.
Newsletters are a great way to keep your audience engaged and informed on the content you create and happenings in your organization. These tips can better help you plan and execute successful newsletter sends regularly.
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