The key to a good email campaign is knowing why you’re sending it
We recently received an informative and interesting email newsletter from a client that sparked a conversation as to what makes a good email newsletter and how to get the most from Mailchimp email campaigns. The email we received was jam-packed with some very useful facts. However, it was missing some integral components for getting maximum traction from Mailchimp emailers.
Making newsletters work
Mailchimp is perfect for sending out bulk emails to clients about your services, resources and offerings. But you have to make your newsletter work for you. If not, it’s a lot of time spent for little or no gain.
At Woodswork, our focus is on how to help you make sure your email campaigns will truly benefit your website.
Newsletter keys
There are 3 keys to a good newsletter: purpose, value and engagement. Your emailer should offer useful, valuable content and create engagement through a clear message that shows the recipient exactly what to do next. While reading the email from our client, I noticed that everything offered to readers was in that single email. It was a gift that the recipient didn’t even have to work for.
What an emailer must always do is drive the reader to your website
The issue here is that the purpose of an emailer is to create engagement and provide some kind of call to action. This CTA was missing in action.
The CTA could be to sell products, make bookings or generate leads, all of which should happen on your website. A CTA is the beginning of the sales funnel, and that action should benefit your site, not somebody else’s.
Why do we want the reader to head to your website?
We want the links from your campaigns to go to your site, not some other site. It doesn’t matter how useful that 3rd party content is. On top of sales, we want visits to your site because Mailchimp newsletters help with your linking strategy.
Every time someone reads a Mailchimp email and clicks a link to head somewhere, the entry to that site registers as a backlink and that backlink should be yours. Backlinking and internal linking are all techniques we use to create link juice that makes your website healthy, attractive and worthy of interest from a search engine’s point of view.
When I noticed that all of this was missing from our client’s emailer, I sent the following email…
Here’s a tip for you…
Instead of adding all the information in your emailer, add a teaser and a button to “read more about it”.
That button should link to the content in a blog post on your website.
Linking to another site is a nice thing to do. However, you are effectively moving the focus from your business, and what you can do for your clients, to another business!
Instead, the ‘XXX link’ could be to info in a paragraph in your blog post, which is a big tick.
Ultimately you are offering wonderful content in a resource area that people will come to for credible information.
You want to drive traffic to your site to support your site health!
Visits to your website to create traction in your business and covert your tribe to customers is the purpose of email campaigns.
Blogs are so good for SEO! This explains more… Why blogging is important for your business
I hope this makes sense.
If you want a chat about it, I’m here all day.Warm regards
Clare Woods
The client was happy and that makes us happy…
Thank you very much for your tip, I appreciate it.
I read your blog post & clicked on a few more (proving you right!).
Mailchimp makes it all so easy
Mailchimp is a great lead-generation tool. More than ever, it is important to share as much information as we can with our existing and possible clients. Linking to a blog on your website is a great way to do this.
Why? It shows that you are an expert in your field, giving you that extra level of credibility, and it drives traffic to your site which in turn enhances your site health – double bonus!
Mailchimp has a free version and several paid options. The free version includes a monthly email send limit of 10,000 sends (daily limit of 2,000) emails to your email list, so it’s super cost-effective. We can easily integrate Mailchimp into your website. That way visitors can opt in on the subscription box and their email adresses will then go straight into your Mailchimp account.
If you haven’t started your email list, go through your existing emails, and set up a Mailchimp account; you will already have plenty of contacts to send your informative email campaigns to.
If you want to chat more about what makes a good email newsletter, feel it’s too hard to set up or write regular blogs or newsletters, or don’t have time, we offer affordable blogging and Mailchimp Newsletter Campaign options.
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