We all know the benefits of a strong newsletter:

• It’s cheap! 
• Creates a consistent connection between you and your customers
• Usually generates lots of extra traffic to your website/webshop
• An easy way to announce new things and share them with a broad audience
• Customizable and good for your reputation

But most of all, it can generate lots of extra sales!

But what if you’re not getting out the results you are expecting?

No worries, we’ve listed some useful tips to increase your newsletter’s click-through rate and maximize your online sales.

Personalisation

We can’t say it enough: personalisation is an increasing trend and too important to ignore these days. Therefore, include the name of your recipient in the subject lines of your newsletters. This way, they will feel personally approached by you, which is always beneficial. 

If you can, send personalized content to segmented email lists. People like to feel that the content is relevant to them. If not, the likeliness of clicking on a button can decrease.
Just dig a bit deeper into your data, use this as a starting point for creating segmented audiences, try out some test emails and learn from your results. Yep, you know we like testing at The Dot team! ;-)

Making your newsletter readers feel like they are important and unique, is another great way to boost click-through-rates. How can you do this? Give offers, discounts or early-access only to your subscribers AND make them aware of this. 

Last but not least, the content of your newsletter should be short & sweet. Remember that it’s not a blog post and people usually scan your newsletter in a few seconds! If you don’t trigger them in those first few seconds, you lose them.

Call-to-action

Just like a café is nothing without beer, a newsletter is nothing without call-to-actions!

Call to action is a marketing term for any design to prompt an immediate response or encourage an immediate sale, like “SHOP NOW”, “DISCOVER MORE”, “CHECK IT OUT”, etc.

Here are some best practices for the optimal newsletter:

• Less is more: use around 3 call to action items in your newsletter. If you choose less, click-through-rates will drop because people are not encouraged enough. If you choose more, people will feel overwhelmed.
• Use buttons instead of text call-to-actions
• Try putting your buttons on the top of the page and as left as possible. 
• Use UTM tags for data analysis
  (Don’t know what this means? Reach out to us and we will guide you through it!)

The Basics

The optimal timing for sending out your newsletters is before and after working hours. In practice this means: before 6am and after 6pm.
Why? People usually go through their personal emails just before work (for example: during breakfast or on their way to work) and after work (for example: during some TV time).

Research has shown that the highest CTRs are usually on a Monday and Tuesday. The worst CTRs have been tracked on a Saturday. If you think about it, this is not so crazy. People are sad for having to go back to work after the weekend and like to treat themselves for a better feeling. On the other hand, on a Saturday you usually have lots of other social plans, which doesn’t involve checking your emails on a regular basis.

Therefore, try sending out some newsletters on a Sunday evening or a Monday morning. And yep, you probably already hear us saying it: test test test! (and most important: learn from your testing!)

Looking at the frequency of your newsletters, it’s best to send out only 1 per week. No more, no less. If you do less, you lose the connection with your fans. If you do more, you will overwhelm them and you might risk a high unsubscribing rate.

Last but not least: never forget to optimize the mobile version of your newsletter!

It goes without saying that people are always on their phone. Think about this when creating your next newsletter. And don’t forget: those first seconds mean everything!

We are happy to hear about your results after implementing our tips!

Share this with your friends, colleagues, business partners or anyone who will benefit from it.