Designing a Powerful Newsletter for Startups – Step-By-Step Guide

So, you think newsletters are not legit forces anymore?

Think again!

Email marketing is easy to neglect, because of the advent of numerous marketing tools and platforms like social media marketing, artificial intelligence and chatbots.

But did you know there are more than 5.5 Bn active email accounts currently and growing? This makes email marketing a great opportunity to acquire new customers.

Convinced Yet?

Email marketing is 40 times more effective way to acquire new customers than social media, according to a Mckinsey Report. It is also the highest ROI generating channel generating the- for every $1 spent, email marketing generates $44 in ROI.

Now that we have your full attention- email marketing is still powerful and relevant in this age of instant-gratification by social media, because:

• It allows you to make a direct connection with your customers.
• It is the easiest and most cost-effective way to keep in touch with your audience.
• Email newsletters boost traffic to your website.
• This drive sale as you get more opportunities to convert your audience from consumer to customer.
• Emails are more authentic than SEO driven content. You get to truly engage with your audience by providing them value and build loyal and genuine followers.

Newsletters are definitely in vogue and effective.

The next big question is – How can a startup incorporate email newsletters as a part of their digital marketing strategy, without losing mind and money over it?

Step-by-step Guide on How to Implement a Newsletter

Find the “True calling” of your newsletter

What is that higher purpose, the goal, the meaning that your newsletter was born to fulfil?

Email newsletters are not just delivery vehicles. They are meant to align and solve business goals and corporate values. It could be to build an audience, improve engagement, boost conversions, announce new launches, user reviews or retention.

However, the most critical goal that it solves is building trust and a deeper connection with your user base.

This newsletter from CultFit, a health and fitness startup, sends out regular alerts to subscribers about their promotions and launches. This particular alert has a short and simple design. It highlights the CTA and creates a sense of privilege for members by offering a deep discount.

Monthly/ Weekly/ Daily?

Email marketing campaigns can be of different types – standard promotional, welcome email, seasonal, or abandoned cart.

The frequency of sending out a newsletter, including all the above types, should be limited. You don’t want to cross the line between creating good engagement and spamming.

Maintain a regular schedule of delivery, so that the audience knows when to expect and look forward to engaging with the valuable content.

Killer strategy

Next step is to determine “What” you are actually going to write.

You can choose to go curated and create a roundup of relevant news from the week. Or offer a monthly digest of the blog content on your website. If you need some inspiration you can do some competitor analysis or even, try a preliminary survey and ask your target audience what content might be valuable for them.

Pepperfry sends out a daily newsletter with curated content based on a theme. With the subject line – “This calls for a drink”, Pepperfry sent out a list of products ranging from wine racks, bar cabinets and stools to beer mugs and cocktail glasses, match that subject.

Pepperfry Daily Newsletter

If you prefer fresh content for your newsletter and are focusing on creating awareness and interest, try creating content that focuses on problems and pain points.

Use clever and crisp subject lines that readers will want to open.

Use all the information like tone, style, subject line format, footer, to clearly define your content guidelines. Create a template to save time in the future and maintain consistency in the brand image. To define template and maintain consistency, try free email marketing solutions like

• MailChimp
• Mailjet
• SendPulse
• Benchmark

Less is More

Use your newsletter to offer value to your audience in a friendly tone, sans the corporate language and SEO burden. Keep it short. Use a minimalistic and clean design like this Jabong newsletter.

A picture says a thousand word! Use beautiful graphic content with limited words and a strategic call-to-action, for some memorable yet actionable experience.

Build and Segment your contact list

Keep building your contact list by offering attractive offers and a responsive sign-up widget on your website.

Naturally yours pop-up

Nobody likes to receive an irrelevant email. You can’t just “hope for the best” and send your newsletter to every person on the contact list. Segmentation, a feature provided by most email service, allows you to divide your contact list based on interests and behaviors. Targeted audiences means better engagement.

Track metrics

Based on your goals, there are a number of metrics that you can track to measure the success of your newsletter and understand your audience.

Some of the key KPIs to choose from are-

• Open rate
• Click through rate
• Conversion rate
• ROI
• Sign-up rate
• Bounce rate
• Spam rate
• Email-generated sales

Content Calendar

Add your newsletter schedule in the editorial calendar. This will not only help you in maintaining your sanity but also help in overall marketing strategy. As you include newsletter in the calendar, you will witness how marketing on different platforms work hand-in-hand and target every consumer, especially during new launches, offers or promotions.

Run a test

You slept on it and feel ready to blast! Hold your horses just yet and run some tests and preview it. Trust us you don’t want to send out the newsletter to your hundreds (or million) of subscribers and face the wrath of goof-ups later. Save the embarrassment and Test, edit, test. Repeat!

Now brace yourself and launch your email newsletter!

Yay! You did it!

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