If you’re on our email list, you know that every week we send out two emails— Tuesday Tips & Sips and Sunday’s SEO Squeeze.
We chose email marketing as one of our main marketing channels pretty early on. It’s grown into a way to authentically connect with our audience twice a week.
We get tons of positive feedback on our emails. Recently, one subscriber replied asking us to talk more about our email lists, which inspired this episode!
So if you have a question for us or something you want us to talk about on the podcast, send us a DM and let us know!
If you’ve been thinking about starting a newsletter or your current one needs a glow-up, we have nine email newsletter ideas that will help you!
1. Name your newsletter.
We started with Tuesday Tips & Sips. We chose that name because signature cocktails are a huge part of our brand.
We added the day of the week we’re sending it for some accountability on our end. This is a little hack for you if you’re worried about being consistent!
Here are a few other examples of newsletters with clever names that relate to their brand:
Our audience knows exactly what to expect from this newsletter: A tip and a sip on Tuesdays.
2. Use moving headers.
Our email headers have animation and movement to them, which makes them fun and on-brand for us. The person who requested this podcast episode was really curious about how we do this!
Court made a GIF in Photoshop (you can also do this in Canva) and added it to the top of our newsletters.
Here’s what it looks like:
3. A newsletter that looks and feels on brand.
We use Flodesk for a reason! There are so many ways to customize the layouts and formatting for your brand. And keeping everything on brand makes your company more memorable and recognizable.
You can add your colors, fonts, icons, patterns, and brand photography to your account so you can quickly change the branding to make your newsletters really feel like your brand.
A lot of times, our email list is the first interaction someone has with our brand. They may have signed up for a lead magnet or subscribed from our blog page, and this is the first time they hear from us directly. We want to make a good impression!
Something we often see people forget is dark mode. Some people have dark mode enabled on their mobile devices, so you want to double-check what your branding looks like with a dark background instead of the traditional white one.
Want to give Flodesk a try? Get 50% off your first year with our link.
4. It’s all about spaces.
We talked about this in Episode #176 for blog content, but it’s important for emails, too.
Short paragraphs are KEY to improving readability and engagement. No one wants to read giant paragraphs in emails (or at all, really).
And on mobile devices (where most people read emails), paragraphs look even longer.
So, keep your sentences and paragraphs super short to make them more skimmable.
Then, call out your most important pieces of information by making them bold, colorful, or a little bigger to draw attention to them.
5. Write like you are talking to ONE person, not many.
Personalization is important for any marketing writing you do. You want to try to write to just one person, even though you’re sending your email to several.
Flodesk allows us to insert people’s names into our emails, which we love doing. It makes the email feel more personal and directed toward them.
6. GIFs and images are encouraged.
We love finding creative ways to break up the text in our emails. We have fun graphics, pictures, GIFs (as you already saw), and patterns to make our emails fun and engaging.
Here’s a fun example of how we do that:
7. Be consistent.
You’ve probably heard that your email list is full of “hot leads.” These are people who have indicated some sort of interest in your business, either by signing up for the list directly or downloading a freebie.
Don’t ghost them! Set the expectation that you’re going to consistently show up in their inboxes. People will start to look forward to your emails!
And this goes back to naming your newsletter with the day of the week you’re going to send it out – it’s setting the expectation with your audience.
8. Make it a “must-open” email.
Subject lines are what get people to open emails. Your content inside could be amazing, but if the subject line is boring, your subscribers will never get to see your content because they never opened the email in the first place!
We save subject lines we’ve seen and loved in a folder to use for later. You can also use ChatGPT to help you come up with short, interesting, and surprising subject lines.
9. Quiz your audience.
Find out what they want to know more about and see inside your newsletters. Is there something that’s not working for them? Are you missing something that they are interested in?
Poll your audience and subscribers every once in a while to make sure your newsletters are still providing value.
Anatomy of an Email
What goes into an email exactly? How do you make it pretty and valuable for your audience? This is the formula we use for Tuesday Tips & Sips.
Need help designing your newsletter template? The Inbox Spritz gives you everything you need to grow an email list.
Apply these email newsletter ideas and watch your engagement skyrocket!
FAQs About Email Newsletter Ideas
How to make a pretty email newsletter?
We love the features Flodesk provides! You can start with one of their templates and apply your branding.
How to make your emails more fun?
Tie a story into your emails. This makes the tip you share more applicable and the email more engaging and relatable.
How long should an email newsletter be?
It’s up to you! Give enough context so someone can read it and walk away learning something new.
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Abbey Oslin and Courtney Petersen are Minnesota-based marketing experts, educators, and co-founders of boutique marketing agency Duo Collective, which specializes in SEO, social media strategy, and branding for small business owners and creative entrepreneurs. To learn more about Duo Collective, or to inquire about working with our team, head over to www.duocollective.com.
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Once again, y’all did it! This is fabulous. The anatomy of an email graphic is perfect! Woo hoo. Re designing my emails now. Thank you!
We’re so glad you love it! Can’t wait to see it!