How to Get Your Newsletter Read
Email newsletters are still one of the primary ways to successfully engage with customers. In this article, we’ll show you how to make the most of your email newsletter.
What Makes a Newsletter Successful?
Let’s start by looking at what makes a newsletter successful. In a 2019 email marketing report by GetResponse, they revealed the average newsletter performance for all their users:
How to Increase Your Newsletter Open and Click Rates
Your newsletter data can do a lot more than just tell you whether or not your email marketing efforts have been successful. You can use it to identify problem areas, too. Learn how to read the data and you’ll be able to repair the email marketing flow to get more people to sign up for your newsletter, open it, and click back to your website.When You Don’t Have Any Signups
There are a number of things that may be wrong here, but they all stem from your website and, more specifically, the newsletter subscription form on it. For starters, how are you serving the form to your visitors? Is it as a pop-up? That may be your issue right there. Our visitors are inundated with pop-ups: push notification requests, lead gen giveaways, cookie consent requests, site abandonment warnings, and so on. Don’t design your form so that it’s easy to dismiss. What about the design itself? Does it stick out on the page like a sore thumb or, conversely, get lost in the design? Are you asking for too much information? Are there any other red flags? Scroll to the very bottom of this page and you’ll find WebDesigner Depot’s ever-present subscription form:

When There Aren’t Many Opens, But Bounces Aren’t an Excuse
Let’s say your bounce rate is low, so you know that subscribers are getting your newsletters. Yet, your open rate is abysmal (like below 5%). What’s going on here? Something’s happening the second your email hits their inbox. First, take a look at your sender email. Does your address match the name of your brand or is it something like jason12456@hotmail.com? If you have a website, then your email address needs to match the domain name. The same goes for the name that shows up in the “From:” field. Another thing that could be happening is that your subject line is turning subscribers off. This is Social Native’s newsletter:
When Your Newsletter Is Getting Opened, But CTR Is Too Low
Like I said earlier, it’s important to know your open rate, but it doesn’t mean much if you get 40% opens but no clicks. If that’s what’s happening to you, then there are one of a few underlying issues here. The first is that the design sucks. It could be a number of things: the color palette is jarring, the images aren’t loading, the typography is difficult to read. Or it could be because there’s no design at all, like this example from the Library of Congress:

When You Have a Good CTR, But Your Landing Page Bounce Rate Is High
Okay, so you’ve gotten your subscribers to open and click. For some reason, though, there’s nothing happening on the landing page you’ve directed them to. The problem here is obvious: the landing page doesn’t fulfill the expectations set in the email. If it’s a blog post you sent them to, review the content of it. Does the description match the post? Is the topic too shallowly explored? Are there broken links, missing images, or other errors on the page? If it’s a sales landing page you sent them to, are you clear in the newsletter where you were about to send them? Does the landing page match the rest of your site or could it possibly pass for a phishing page? Is there an overwhelming amount of content to get through? It doesn’t really matter where the link goes so long as you set the right expectations in your newsletter and then deliver on the linked page. For example, this is a recent newsletter from Stephen King:

Wrap-Up
You might find after all this that your metrics are a mixed bag. Sometimes you get a lot of opens and clicks, and other times you don’t. That might just mean that your newsletter content is inconsistent and that you need to refine your strategy so you only deliver the kinds of content your subscribers find the most value in. It also might mean that you need better list segmentation. If you suspect something is off and that your open and click-through rates should be higher, A/B test some alternative designs and content. You may be surprised by what you find. Featured image via DepositPhotos.WDD Staff
WDD staff are proud to be able to bring you this daily blog about web design and development. If there's something you think we should be talking about let us know @DesignerDepot.
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