Boutique Marketing Spotlight: The Email Newsletter

If you’re wondering what an email newsletter even is, we’re here to give you the deets. An email newsletter is a message sent to customers who are subscribers. Typically, this newsletter sign-up form should live on your homepage as a static form or pop-up form. Newsletters are normally sent out in steady intervals, like once a month on the last day of month or once every quarter and can include information about your business, your industry overall, promotions and sales.

Recurring email newsletters are a great and easy way to build relationships with your customers. Not only do you stay at top-of-mind to your subscribers, but you can build trust, convey your brand personality, share news and get powerful click-through rates that boost your online sales.

Email Marketing Tools

A few of the top email marketing tools businesses use and rate highly are Constant Contact, Vertical Response, Benchmark and Active Campaign. These tools come with ready-made but editable templates that look great and take out a lot of the extra time, work and effort that goes into building an email from scratch. They also provide analysis features that let you look at campaign stats, like total open rates and finding out which link is clicked the most.

After you’ve chosen your email marketing tool, you’ll need to plan your content. Let’s dive into the anatomy of an email.

Subject Lines

Subject line: The subject line will be the first thing your audience reads, making it prime real estate. Get to the heart of your message (but don’t feel the need to include everything your email discusses) and give your readers a reason to click through to keep reading. Are you offering a promotion? Is something on sale? Will they get valuable information by reading your email, like the hottest denim trends of this season or a money-saving tip? Keep these short, as some email clients (and especially email viewed on mobile devices) will truncate these lines of text.

Preheader

Preheader: Preheader text lives below the subject line. Again, keep these short. We recommend preheaders measure up at about 30-35 characters (not words!) to ensure they don’t get cut off. A preheader is a great place to offer up more information, context — and it’s the perfect place to put a CTA! Typically, the strength of your preheader, its subject line and the CTA will greatly impact your click-through rates! If you aren’t familiar with CTAs, keep reading.

Headline

Headline: The headline is often large, bold text that lives on the email itself, above the body copy. Again, keep this short, punchy and use it to summarize your email or an important portion of the email, like a sale or big in-store event. It’s a good idea to have this mirror your subject line, but it’s not necessary if you have something else that’s compelling to share here.

Body

Body: This is the meat and potatoes of your email. The nitty gritty. You can block this by topic with modules, text boxes, etc. that have their own headlines, like Constant Contact offers, for example. That way, information is neatly organized and your readers can skip around without becoming overwhelmed or confused. For example, your 3 topics covered in a single email could be: 50% Off Spring Styles, How to Save By Buying Bulk Essentials and In-Store Happy Hour This Saturday. Each of these headlines will stand alone and be accompanied by supporting copy below, giving the details on each topic. Or, if you just have one message to display, like you’re switching physical locations of your store, your body copy can just be one or two super- short paragraphs.

Call to Action

CTA: Calls to action, or CTAs, may be sprinkled through out your email in the form of in-text links and eye- catching buttons. These are simply phrases that tell your customer to do something. When writing CTAs, always ask, “What’s in it for my customer?” Try not to insert an overwhelming amount of links in your email. Calls to action need to be clear, honest and compelling. For example, if you’re offering graphic tees and free shipping for a limited time, “Get free shipping” and “Find your next fave tee” are more intriguing CTAs than simply “Shop now.” A well-constructed CTA will get your customers from your email newsletter to your online store.

Do you currently send email newsletters? If so, what seems to get the most click-through with your customers? Share in the comments below!