6 Tricks to Turn Your Email Newsletter into a Lead-Generation Machine

An effective email newsletter can be a critical component of your business’s inbound marketing strategy. A newsletter that quickly informs your readers of your latest product updates, services, and content, can help position your business as thought leaders within your industry. But what if your email newsletter is struggling to convert recipients into leads for your business? 

We’ve compiled a list of six tricks to turn your email newsletter into a lead-generation machine.

1. Write an Eye-Catching Subject Line

Subject lines are the most critical part to all email marketing campaigns, including your newsletter. Thirty-five percent of email recipients open emails on the strength of the subject line alone. 

Follow these tips to improve the effectiveness of your newsletter subject line:

• Optimize your subject line for mobile: Using a free tool, like Zurb, can help you see what your subject line and preview text will look like on mobile devices.
• Use emojis: Emojis can increase your open rate. Fifty-six percent of brands that used an emoji in their subject line saw improvements to their open rates.
• Vary your subject line: Change your subject line for each newsletter sent, rather than using the same subject line every time.

2. Test and Choose the Best Sender

You’re not likely to open an email from someone you’ve never heard from before. Your marketing contacts and newsletter subscribers are the same way. 

If your company is well known, you can probably get away with using your brand name as the send name for your newsletter. However, it’s always better to take a more personal approach and include the name of a real person from your company.

3. Create the Right Template and Optimize It

There are plenty of considerations to make when choosing your newsletter template. Regardless of which marketing tool you’re using to send your email, there are a few factors you should pay close attention to when creating your template:

• Ensure your template meets the standard email width of 600px.
• Use a mobile-friendly template. Typically, a single-column email template works best for an email that’s going to be delivered to mobile users.
• Make sure your template is easily editable. This will enable you to make changes to your newsletter template and optimize your future emails based on data and reader feedback.

4. Make Sure the Email Is Scannable

With the amount of emails and notifications everyone gets these days, it’s hard to blame anyone for skimming through emails. Because of users’ short attention spans, it’s important to create a newsletter that’s scannable. 

To help with this, you can use images to draw your readers attention to key areas of the email. Additionally, you can use subheads and bullet points to guide readers toward any calls to action (CTAs) you might include.

5. Use Effective CTA Design

Once you’ve created the content for your newsletter and settled on a template, it’s time to create effective CTAs that will turn your newsletter subscribers into leads, customers, and evangelists for your brand. 

To get the most out of your CTAs, you’ll want to do the following:

• Include the CTAs multiple times throughout the email (three is a good sweet spot).
• Make sure your CTAs appear in different formats. For example, you can have a button CTA and a hyperlink CTA in your newsletter that lead to the same offer.
• Use the right color for your CTAs. The colors do not always have to match your brand standards. You can use different colors like red or black, to create a sense of urgency or luxury, respectively.

6. Test and Optimize

Once your newsletter is created, you’ll want to test the email internally to check for responsiveness on mobile devices, readability, spelling errors, and more. Send the email to fellow coworkers to test the newsletter across multiple devices.

Finally, once your newsletter has been sent to your subscribers, it’s important to remember that your work is not done! In order to turn your newsletter into a lead-generation machine, you’ll want to optimize the design and content of your newsletter based on the data from your previous sends. 

Analyzing data such as open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and unsubscribes can help you make informed decisions that will improve the effectiveness of your newsletter. It’s important to regularly analyze this data and implement any changes based on your findings.

It’s Time to Generate Leads

In summary, it’s no small effort to create a newsletter that’s an effective lead driver for your business. However, we hope the steps above will help you quickly and effectively inform your readers of any updates to your products, services, or content—and help turn them into customers.