Before you decide that your company can’t benefit from an email newsletter, know these stats:
- 5.6 billion active email accounts in 2019
- 73% of millennials prefer to communicate with businesses over email
- 99% of people check their email every day
- 83% of B2B companies are using email newsletters
- 40% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their success
Not convinced yet? See The Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats for 2019 for more stats that back up why you need an email newsletter.
So really, there are actually 5.6 billion reasons why you need an email newsletter. But for simplicity’s sake, we’ve highlighted the 8 core reasons why we believe in email newsletters.
We have a newsletter – subscribe here. Each of us on the Know Agency team has a long list of favorite newsletters. We write newsletters for our clients.
The beauty and power of the email newsletter is that it lets you connect, communicate, and support the people who are interested in what you’re doing.
“…newsletters are one of the most cost-effective ways of talking to your customer that business can ever have. But only when they’re done right. With skill, with a strategy, with a methodology, they become one of the most effective instruments in your digital toolbox. They build community. They build your brand. And they relentlessly build long-term growth.” (Excerpted from Do/Open/How a simple email newsletter can transform your business by David Hieatt)
A Tweet, Facebook post, or Instagram photo cannot do this as easily. Now, social media has its place, but think of how hard you have to work to stay visible in the ever-changing algorithms and tide of social media updates. Exactly.
Your Tweet is there. And then it’s gone. But that email newsletter? It’s in your subscribers’ inbox, ready and waiting to be read when it’s convenient.
What Is an Email Newsletter?
An email newsletter is your chance to connect, inform, sell, and show-off. People subscribe to your newsletter for what it gives them.
So, based on your brand, business, and subscriber interests, your email newsletter might look very different from the Know Agency newsletter.
You may choose to curate the latest tech headlines or to give readers an easy way to access the latest news and blog posts on your website. Or maybe you want to use your newsletter as a way to capture content that doesn’t fit on social media or on the company blog. Large companies use internal newsletters to keep their employees informed.
Really, the email newsletter is whatever you want it to be.
Just make sure it is giving your subscribers what they want. The strength of the email newsletter is that thanks to the subscribe, open, and unsubscribe stats, you’ll find out very quickly if you’re giving people what they want.
The thing is, we really want you to get on the email newsletter train. Remember email isn’t going anywhere. Think of how often you check your email.
A great email newsletter is like a welcome houseguest – you look forward to it, you want to read it, and you’re happy you’ve spent time with it, and you’ll welcome it back.
It doesn’t matter what your brand or niche is. There is a place for an email newsletter in your digital marketing strategy.
Refinery29 says that newsletters drive 20% of site traffic. Vox Media reports that newsletter subscribers spend twice as much time on site. Wired says that newsletter subscribers are 7X more likely than other users to become paid subscribers. On top of that, The Times of London says paid subscribers who also receive newsletters are much less likely to let a subscription lapse.
Read Why Publishers Are Paying to Acquire Newsletter Subscribers for more on why every business is keen to benefit from the humble email newsletter.
The 8 Reasons Why You Need an Email Newsletter
We want you to send out interesting and engaging email newsletters. Here our 8 reasons why you need an email newsletter:
- Time
You don’t have a lot of free time. Other people don’t have a lot of free time. But you do read your email and so does everyone else. An email newsletter is the most efficient way to communicate and grow your business - Value
For every $1 spent on a newsletter, there is a $40 return on investment.
It really doesn’t get much better than this. All it takes is knowing what you want from your newsletter and then working with the people who can write, curate, and design the newsletter you and your audience crave. - Connect
Thanks to the ability to personalize email, you can establish an instant connection with every person on your subscriber list. I definitely click the email subject line that reads: Jane, Learn the Latest on Google Algorithms and Search Insights. This subject line establishes an instant connection with me, and it is directly connected to my primary professional interests. - Grow
A smart email newsletter gets shared amongst friends. Like a good book, it gets passed around and then suddenly you’re getting more subscribers, more website click-throughs, more social media followers, and more sales.
Think of how hard you have to work to get organic website traffic – now imagine what could happen if the 100 people who subscribe to your email newsletter forwards it to 100 other people… - Support
Your email newsletter allows you to support the interests of your readers. You can answer their questions, give them the industry content they want, provide them with the irreverent facts that are hard to find, and give them a chance to take a break from their busy days.
Remember, everyone subscribes for a different reason – once you know this reason you can give people that thing they’re looking for: a laugh, a fact, a link to your online store, a free download, or a chance to learn something new. - Email
5.6 billion email accounts in 2019. Email is not dead. Long live email. Email newsletters are the original social network. Email has staying power.
You’re never going to quit email or remove email from your smartphone – and neither are the people you want to communicate with.
“You don’t have to fight an algorithm to reach your audience,” Casey Newton, a journalist who writes The Interface, a daily newsletter for the technology news site The Verge, told me. “With newsletters, we can rebuild all of the direct connections to people we lost when the social web came along.” (The New Social Network Isn’t All That New, NY Times) - Mobile
A smart email newsletter should be designed for mobile reading. Now your readers have something to read on the bus, standing in line at the grocery store, or when waiting at the doctor’s office. Remember, people don’t have a lot of time, but they still need and are interested in what you have to say – make it easy for them to get what they want. A Tweet gets lost, stories disappear, and it can be hard to stand out in the Facebook newsfeed – but email is forever. - Measurable
Thanks to companies like Mailchimp, you can create good-looking email newsletters and then measure everything about your newsletter. You can find out and track the open rate, click-through rate, scroll depth, time spent reading, subscribe rate, unsubscribe rate, share history and rate, and more. With this information you can then create email newsletter that give your readers what they want. There is no better way to get instant feedback from others.
How To Write an Email Newsletter That People Open and Read
The email newsletters that I read and the ones that we write for our clients have a few things in common:
- Subject Line: interesting, personalized, and informative
- Header: communicates the goal of the newsletter and your company name
- Image: uses Alt text and tells the reader something about the newsletter content
- Voice: write like you talk, be friendly, and use words that make sense for your readers
- Message: know what you want to say and why you’re saying it
- Length: shorten or lengthen based on the what your readership stats tell you
- Unsubscribe: make it easy for people to unsubscribe
- Tested: always test your newsletter before you send it
There is so much more that I want to tell you about writing an email newsletter that people do open and read, but to do this right, requires another blog post or a Know Agency email newsletter devoted to how to write smart, engaging, and effective email newsletters.
If you can’t wait for our next email newsletter (coming at the end of May), contact me and we can talk about your email newsletter and digital marketing goals.
10 Email Newsletters the Know Agency Team Always Reads
- Search News You Can Use
- Dense Discovery
- Sidebar.io
- Strands of Genius
- Chicken Shed Chronicles
- NYT Cooking
- the morning shakeout
- Storythings
- Austin Kleon
- Peak Performance
Happy subscribing, reading, learning, and sharing. We hope these give you some inspiration for your email newsletter.
About the author
Jane Phelps is the CEO/Partner at Know Agency. Jane is the main point of contact for our clients and handles all aspects of in-house SEO demands. This includes providing SEO training, competitive analysis, keyword research, algorithm analysis, and the review of all new content to ensure SEO best-practices are followed. Jane holds a Master’s Certificate in Online Marketing from the University of San Francisco, is BrightEdge Certified and is the head of the BrightEdge User Group in Atlanta, GA.
