8 Tips for the Perfect Newsletter

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Hey, it’s Clifton here.

Today, I wanted to do a featured post from a fellow creator I respect in the newsletter space.

He’s a big reason why this newsletter is able to consistently reach over 11,000 people and provide value daily.

Learn from one of his recent posts below:

Writing content for your newsletter is different than creating content for social media.

It has to be more strategic, more dialed, and more intentional about who it’s for and what you’re helping them with.

In light of Beehiiv raising $33M Series B earlier this week…

I’m going to share 8 tips for writing, curating, and crafting the perfect newsletter for your brand.

If you want to grow and monetize your newsletter, quickly, master these tips.

Let’s dive in:

1. Know Your Audience

You may think this one is obvious, but as time goes on, it’s easy to forget your target audience. And across different marketing channels, your target audience may be slightly different.

It’s helpful to picture a singular avatar when writing your newsletter. What do they do? Where do they work? How old are they? What are they interested in? Make sure to include these questions before you sit down to write your next newsletter.

2. Strategic Call-to-Action Placement (CTA)

There are mixed opinions out there when it comes to placing CTAs in a newsletter. Here’s my advice (because it’s worked for me), make your CTAs as simple as possible and limit to 1-3 different CTAs per newsletter.

If you ask someone to do one thing, chances are they’ll remember and (potentially) take action.

If you ask them to do 5 different things in the matter of 60 seconds, they’ll likely be overwhelmed and not take action on any.

Keep it simple and place your CTAs here:

• 1 above the fold (before they have to scroll down)

• 1 to break up the text

• 1 in the P.S. section at the end

3. Tell a Story

“Everyone is captivated by a story.”

Aim to write newsletters in the format of story, value, CTA. If you can hook people in with a good story and then tie some sort of valuable action item with it, your newsletter will be one that people remember and come back to read.

People love to be entertained just as much as they love learning new things.

4. Craft Compelling Subject Lines

The key to better open rates? Better subject lines.

Based on Beehiiv’s annual report, the subject lines with the highest opens had 20 or fewer characters. What does that tell us?

The shorter the better.

Also, using some sort of authoritative language and adding numbers or emojis tend to help. Something like:

“🚀 You Need These 8 Skills to Make 6-figures in 2024”

5. Keep it Concise and Scannable

There’s a fine line between writing a valuable, actionable newsletter with a story vs. writing a mini novel in your newsletters.

It’s an art more than it is a skill.

People like to finish things… make it scannable, use bold and italics, and break up the text so it’s not one long block of text.

6. Track and Analyze Performance

“You cannot improve what you do not measure.”

Track open rates, click rates, and deliverability. Measure what content does well and what doesn’t. Shoot for a 40%+ open rate.

7. Segment Your Audience

When your dashboard says you have 10,000 subscribers, you may only have 6,000 of those who are actively reading your newsletters every week.

Most of the time, that’s the case. Make sure you’re segmenting out the people who stop reading your emails but are still on your list.

Start with these segments:

• Engaged 30 days

• Engaged 60 days

• Engaged 90 days

And alter sending to those to improve/keep your open rates high.

8. Encourage Engagement

When someone clicks, stars, replies, or moves your emails to “primary” the email providers love it and it helps your deliverability.

If you want more engagement, simply tell them to “reply” to this email or start off an email by saying:

“Hey it’s Eric. If you’ve been enjoying my newsletters, make sure to:

• favorite the email

• move to primary if it’s in promotions

• Reply saying something like “hello”

Thanks! This ensures you continue getting my newsletters in the future.”

Building a brand is about more than copywriting, marketing, and posting content online consistently…

It’s about adopting the mindset, skills, and beliefs that it takes to build a brand and business online.

And that’s exactly what I plan to dive into every day with this newsletter.

Until next time... Keep building,

Clifton

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