The average office worker receives 121 emails every day.
For most people, an overloaded email inbox is anxiety-building, and often frustrating to deal with. So the last thing your customers need is ANOTHER boring email newsletter crowding their workflow.
Many of those 121 emails are likely coming from businesses, and some will get opened, while others will get redirected straight to the trash.
What is it that entices people to open and click the emails they receive from brands? And perhaps more importantly, how can you replicate that for your business?
The main purpose of this article is to answer those questions by illustrating how some of the best brands deliver compelling email newsletters. But before we get into that, you need to ask yourself one important question…
Should you have an email newsletter?
Email newsletters help nurture prospects at every section of the sales funnel. They can help onboard new audience members, and inform the user right through to customer retention. When used in conjunction with a full digital marketing strategy, email newsletters and sequences can really help drive home your product or service.
But they aren’t necessarily for every business. Maintaining a consistent email newsletter is time-consuming and requires a certain level of discipline, not to mention a regular injection of relevant content at your disposal.
If you DO, however, decide that sending out a regular newsletter is a good fit for your business and its customer group, then it’s important to learn from other successful examples to make sure yours stands out from the crowd.
Creating a great email newsletter for your audience involves a winning combination of style and substance. Consistent branding and a compelling headline are key to getting lots of opens and clicks, but without great content and strong calls to action, the newsletter itself won’t serve much of a purpose.
Fortunately, there are plenty of best-in-class examples of newsletters out there already that you can use to help style your own. I’ve picked some favourites from around the web and highlighted what I think they do right. While they are varied, targeted at diverse audiences with different needs, I find they do many things the same, including:
- Consistent branding
- Responsive formatting that works across devices
- Calls to action
- Clear social sharing buttons
- Personalisation (such as addressing the recipient by their first name)
- Credible business information in the footer
- Effective, to-the-point copy organisation and formatted with compelling design
Below you’ll find 13 of the best email newsletters along with descriptions of what I think they do right – from their content through to their design. They are in no particular order.
Dave Pell’s NextDraft is a trusted daily news aggregator that’s run by a human instead of an algorithm. Visiting about 75 sites daily, Dave picks out the best of the best and delivers it straight to your inbox.
While NextDraft has an app, the email newsletter is the lifeblood of this service. Without it, NextDraft simply wouldn’t exist. Pell really needs to make it work and we think he does. Here’s why:
It has memorable branding, big and bold at the top of the screen, NextDraft’s typeface is eye-catching and the logo is memorable and simple. ‘Powered by Betabrand’, a San Franciscan clothing company and current NextDraft sponsor, is also clearly visible. Previous sponsors have included WordPress.
image: https://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2-1.jpg
In an interview with Techcrunch back in 2014 Pell says of his newsletter:
“The idea is I want you to feel like you are just getting an email from me that you could reply back to… it’s always the personal stuff people remark on. We’re all dying for human connection on the web”.
In keeping with its editorial and curatorial tone, NextDraft’s layout is simple and consistent. 10 sections clearly divided by number and heading outline key stories for the day in Pell’s witty, concise fashion. Outbound links clearly marked in green, a colour thematically relevant to the branding. It is this minimalist approach that makes NextDraft so appealing to around 200k subscribers.
image: https://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/3-2.jpg
Each section is comprised of a couple of paragraphs, with subdued social sharing buttons at the end of each section. In keeping with the minimalist nature of the layout, these grey buttons work well. In a brighter, more visual layout, they might be lost in the grey.
Finally, Pell ends each newsletter with
Thanks
Dave Pell
Managing Editor, Internet
Read more at https://www.business2community.com/email-marketing/13-examples-best-email-newsletters-around-web-01831746