Your brand has an audience. Whether it’s big or small, male or female, old or young, these are the VIPs that can build or break your brand’s future growth. Your audience is made up of customers who have bought from you in the past, as well as those who are interested in what you have to offer, simply needing a push to purchase. Wherever they are in their customer journey with you, engagement is the key to transforming an audience into a community.

Our top tip for engaging with them? Beyond the marketing ads that draw them to you in the first place, and past the product pages that will encourage them purchase, there’s another way to reach out to your audience that will not only captivate them, but have them coming back for more time and time again: your newsletters.

No, we’re not talking about mailing out family updates once in a blue moon. We mean your email marketing strategy.

I know what you’re thinking: do enough people actually read their emails nowadays? Well, in a word, yes. A study done by McKinsey & Company found that email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media. Thanks to the rise in smartphones over the last 20 years, it is now effortless to check your emails on the go, negating the need to log on to your computer to check your inbox. In fact, a whopping 81% of all emails are opened and read on mobile devices.

So what type of newsletters should your brand be sending out to your audience? If you want to captivate them, you need to inspire them, and if you want to inspire them, you need to get creative.

Take a look below as we explore the five types of newsletter content that will go the extra mile for your audience.

‍

1. Promotional Newsletter

Promotional newsletters are a vital part of your email marketing strategy. It’s here that you can let your mailing list know about upcoming sales, discounts and new products that they might be interested in. Listing your best sellers, highlighting new arrivals or launching an end of season sale - a promotional newsletter is the place to do this.

The key with a promo email? Think outside the box. Run a sale that will pique your audiences’ interest, stopping them in their inbox scrolling tracks. It might be offering 23% off to usher in 2023, or running a ‘shortest sale’ on the shortest day of the year. Can you create a discount code that makes them laugh? Think of these new ways to promote your sales or products, and be sure to include this in your subject line - capturing customers’ attention is the key to success here.

The email automations you are sending also play a key part in this - head to our blog, 5 Highly Effective Klaviyo Email Automations For Your Shopify Store to discover which ones you should be using.

2. Blog Newsletter

Newsletters can be a useful way to actually send readers through to your website. A great way to do this is to recycle the content you already have and use it for a newsletter. There are a couple of ways you can do this.

Take a few blog pieces that you can summarise in one email, giving interesting snippets that will leave them wanting more - thus encouraging them to click through to the blog on your website. Alternatively, you can choose to focus on one particular piece of content that you think will add value to your audience, and trim it down into bite size chunks that will fit neatly into your newsletter.

Provided you use the right type of content, this is a great way of keeping your customers engaged and interested. It gives your brand a voice beyond what you sell on your online store.

3. Practical Newsletter

Similar to a blog style newsletter, a practical newsletter provides your audience with useful information, but doesn’t necessarily recycle content that you already have on your website. You can still lead them to your website here, but the main purpose of the content is to simply add value.

With practical emails, think along the lines of tips and tricks, how to’s and useful lists that will give your customers something to take away, finding them useful in their daily life. Selling waterproof socks to hiking fanatics? Engage them with a blog about the 4 best trails to hike in the UK. Does your audience include a lot of males with facial hair? Provide them with useful tips or a how to for grooming and taking care of their beard.

This type of newsletter content shows your audience that you’re not only interested in what’s in their pockets, but that you’re invested in their day-to-day life, and you want to add value to it.

4. UGC Newsletter

A UGC newsletter - that’s User Generated Content - is what will truly turn your audience into a community. Re-using content that has been provided by real customers is a surefire way to provide integrity, build trust and keep new customers engaged.

User Generated Content comes in many different forms. Reviews on your product pages, tagged images on your social media, testimonials - all of this can be reused, recycled and implemented in your email marketing campaigns.

Getting regular tags on social media from customers who have purchased your latest fashion release? Add a collage of customers in a “How You’ve Styled It” newsletter. Have a plethora of reviews on a best selling tech product? Compile them as a list for a featured product newsletter. Use these easy wins to your advantage and shout about them to the rest of your audience. You may just encourage others to purchase, and to share their own content in return. A circle of life for your content strategy!

5. Company Updates Newsletter

Customers want to get to know your brand. The more they know about you, the more they will remember you and the more likely they will be to return to purchase. This is why a newsletter giving company news and updates every so often can be useful in giving your brand a human side. (Emphasis on every so often - bombarding your mailing list with daily updates probably won’t go down so well. Unless it’s pictures of your dog. Everyone loves dogs.)

If you have important updates or big changes coming up, keep your audience in the loop. In return, they will feel included in your plans, and a part of your future. This can also look like sending out a Christmas message, wishing customers a Happy New Year, or letting them know that it’s your brand's birthday.

‍

There we have it - the five types of newsletter content that will take your email marketing strategy to new heights.

It’s important to remember the fact we mentioned earlier - that 81% of all emails are opened and read on mobile devices. This makes it of vital importance that you are always optimising your newsletters for mobile. If your email doesn’t look good on mobile, you may as well send it straight to their spam folder. It won’t get read, it won’t be engaged with and all that hard work will have been for nothing.

Feeling inspired to start producing fresh newsletter content for your audience? Now’s the time, so share those promotions, those social media tags, even the odd dog pic or two and get started! Our inbox awaits…