Email Best Practices
Newsletters don’t have to suck: Give real value to see real return
How did we start associating the word "newsletter" with something negative? Newsletters can provide great value to your customers.
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By Alex Manthei, Community Manager at Mention, Poetry enthusiast and email infused person.
For as long as I can remember, at the beginning of each year, my dad has always put together a family newsletter to show how much we’d grown, photos from family trips, hopes for the future. This not only brings family members who are thousands of miles apart closer together, it also prompts all of us to reflect on good times shared and to get excited about what the future has in store. It adds value to our lives.
So how did we start associating the word “newsletter” (at least when it comes to companies) with something more like this?
If you’re sending out newsletters like that, you’re missing a huge opportunity to actually give back value to the people who use your service.
THere are 3 ideas on how to create newsletters that don’t suck.
Table of contents
Here are some ideas for making your newsletters even more personal
Be yourself
There are more than 3.9 billion email accounts worldwide. 24% of them are business email accounts. https://t.co/zT5gN4jXrN — Mathilde Collin (@collinmathilde) — August 4, 2014
Think of it this way, email still remains the number one social network, especially for businesses. At 300 million people using the service, LinkedIn pales in comparison to the nearly 1 billion email accounts associated with companies.
I mean, how many times do you find yourself writing “It’s nice to e-meet you!” or “It’s nice to connect”? It’s one of the most basic social interactions we have today — more ubiquitous than Twitter, as familiar as a handshake. This has a lot to do with email’s status as a semi-formal medium — a holdover from how we communicate in letters.
Email’s still a format where a lot of the decorum of the past still exists. Here’s a video that illustrates this point perfectly:
Think of it this way, email still remains the number one social network, especially for businesses. At 300 million people using the service, LinkedIn pales in comparison to the nearly 1 billion email accounts associated with companies.
I mean, how many times do you find yourself writing “It’s nice to e-meet you!” or “It’s nice to connect”? It’s one of the most basic social interactions we have today — more ubiquitous than Twitter, as familiar as a handshake. This has a lot to do with email’s status as a semi-formal medium — a holdover from how we communicate in letters.
Email’s still a format where a lot of the decorum of the past still exists. Here’s a video that illustrates this point perfectly:
But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be yourself. And that’s especially true for newsletters. Instead of simply broadcasting out company news and flattering statistics, view newsletters as a social opportunity to reintroduce yourself and your brand’s personality. To ask for feedback, get the community involved, and always offer help.
As Bernie Borges, host of the Social Business Engine, writes on the Mention Blog: “One of the natural occurrences in a social business is the recognition that employees are a powerful force both as a collective body of subject matter experts, and in person-to-person (P2P) social engagement.”
That’s why whenever Mention sends out a newsletter, we identify who’s speaking based on what we’re announcing. So, new product? A newsletter from the CPO. Big news? Why not from the CEO directly? And a community update? Well then, you’ll see me
And that’s actually me! My friend Sarah took that photo. I even send our newsletters directly from my alex at mention dot com account so it’s as easy as hitting reply to get in touch with me should anyone have a question.
Here are some ideas for making your newsletters even more personal
Use Mailjet’s personalization and segmentation features to create separate newsletters — for Android and iOS fans, for instance.
Sometimes simpler is better. Consider stripping a newsletter down to just a simple text email with a few key links. Loose the design from time to time — this feels more like aeveryday email and may actually produce better results.
Include your personal Twitter handle — not just the main company account. Personally, I love knowing I can get in touch with someone at a company directly.
Include behind-the-scenes photos. That’s what Mention’s Instagram account