Email newsletters that frontline your email marketing efforts!

What is an email newsletter and how Creatibly helps you design the strongest email newsletter for your marketing campaigns?

An email newsletter is a piece of collateral in your outbound marketing efforts. It can be used to increase brand recognition, boost sales, drive more traffic to your site and much more.

A newsletter is a marketing tool used by organizations, brands, and personal brand owners to share relevant and valuable information with their network of customers, prospects, and subscribers. Newsletters give you direct access to your audience’s inbox, allowing you to share engaging content, promote sales and drive traffic to your website. With email marketing producing a 4000% return in some cases, it's the most essential piece of your outbound marketing campaigns.

Email marketing also allows for a strong, measurable response to a marketing strategy with the help of tools like Klaviyo and MailChimp. For online store owners and people selling digital products via platforms as Shopify can also take advantage of these infrastructures. With measurable insights, negligible barriers to entry, and ability to be in constant contact with prospects; your business can and should take advantage of this marketing strategy.

Creatibly understands these email marketing channels, we are versed with the infrastructure, and have delivered exceptional results for our clients in the past. With strong customer relationships and an output-oriented approach to our projects. While there are many ways to get to the results you are aiming for, we believe that a thorough and uninterrupted design and delivery experience is essential for successful email marketing campaigns.

Things to consider before you hire a designer for your email newsletter

We have established that an email newsletter is a fantastic piece of marketing collateral for your brand, there are a few considerations that ensure that your prospect views, opens and interacts with your email newsletter; and ultimately moves towards your marketing objectives. Before you hire a designer or a developer to create a design for you, here are some of the pre-requisites:

Strategy

The strategy and intent for your email newsletter will be a defining characteristic of its success. You can compare a newsletter as a short blog post for the inbox with a marketing intent. You will have to educate, entertain and inform your customers your email newsletter. Ask yourself and your team questions like;

Who is my target audience and what value can I provide to them?

Is my goal to Generate web traffic, increase sales, foster customer relationships, create a loyal following, etc.?

What will be included in my email newsletter and how often will I send them out?

These will help you strategize on the theme, the intent and a visual direction for your newsletter. While largely dictated by a brand guideline, these are great inputs for a designer so that they can keep your overarching goals in mind.

Choose an Email Marketing Software

Alot of business owners, especially when starting out, wonder if they need email marketing services or dedicated email clients. The short answer is Yes, you do.

No matter how effective your design and great your copy is, it's not serving anyone if it's not seen. An email newsletter can only work for you if your prospect opens your email. Having your emails opened, read, and then converted is so much easier with email marketing software.

Email deliverability depends on a few factors like your reputation as a sender, subject lines, the newsletter content, and some technical aspects like domain and IPS signature. Email service providers like G-Mail and Outlook are good for individuals but not so much for professional applications. Without taking them into account, your effort in your company's newsletter is simply wasted. Email clients make it extremely convenient to run, personalize with custom subject lines and monitor email campaigns. Some major email clients even come with basic email templates built in for your newsletter campaign.

Major email clients like Mailchimp or Klaviyo take care of a lot of these aspects and much more with dashboards, and data visualizations that provide valuable insights about your email marketing strategy.

Branding and Graphical Requirements

The final calls on visuals will be taken by a professional designer as they are well versed with visual communication and understand user interaction with your email newsletter. Prior to seeking one, ensure that you have all your branding collateral like your company logo, colors, graphics, and campaign images in order.

These elements will be necessary for your designer to personalize your email newsletters. Just like your landing pages, your newsletters also require great attention to detail and should be created and modified as per changing brand guidelines.

The Design

Email newsletters are one of the most effective ways to connect your business with your target customer. As a blog post for the inbox, email newsletters nurture customers, promote brand loyalty, and drive conversions. In order to reap the benefits of an email newsletter, your emails need to be insightful, engaging, and visually pristine.

When working on an email newsletter with your designer or designing it yourself, these practices will help ensure that your email marketing campaigns yield the best possible results:

Observe other newsletter ideas

To keep your readers’ attention, you can change up your content using different newsletter examples. While your theme stays in line with your brand identity and marketing goals, you can use valuable content like listicles, guest inputs, interactive games, a section for new subscribers, rewards, company announcements, etc. Don't be afraid to mix it up. Your secret sauce is out there and alternating these different inclusions will help you find the right mix for your newsletter that your email recipients will appreciate.

You can join mailing lists within your niche and around to see different newsletter examples being used. Just a few examples of your niche or similar niche would be ideal. These can really serve your own newsletter template by highlighting what you wish to include and what you'll do differently.

Keep it Brief and Interesting

Most successful email newsletters use custom standard designs that are altered and populated with new information based on intervals.

Your subject line should be small, catchy, and must pull users in. The fear of missing out on something is a great example but you can innovate on how you get and hold attention. This also applies to your design; aim for a newsletter template that is standardized with your company logo, header, images, and footer sections.

Limit the word count for specific text fields. The copy should slowly reel the reader into the visuals and text and ultimately nudge towards an editable CTA. Your designer must be able to implement, graphics, colors, and typography in a way that moves the reader through the text while respecting all your requirements for the same.

Be Visual

Visuals are an important inclusion in your email newsletter and broadly in your email campaigns. All successful newsletters use intricate eye-catching visuals, illustrations, and gifs to make their newsletters more appealing. This would be especially helpful in retaining new subscribers as they will associate your brand with high quality. A strong hero graphic will always pique interest and make readers scroll through it. There should be consistency within your email campaigns with respect to visuals and they must be on brand. Be more experimental with what you can do with your brand identity and build better, more complex visuals that shout for attention.

Always Include a CTA

Incorporating a clear CTA or Button in your design in your newsletter template is necessary. An editable text field that can hold different values like buy now, learn more, read more, etc.

The CTA or call to action in your newsletter must be small concise and placed strategically with user experience in mind. The bottom is the ideal location, you may have more than one CTA in which case make sure that they make interactions simple and predictable.

Make it Mobile Friendly

An email newsletter will most likely be viewed on a smartphone or some type of mobile device like an iPad. The design must be optimized for a great experience on mobile devices. In most devices, only the first 30 characters of your email will be visible before the viewer opens the email, so make sure the copy is also written in a way that the first 30 characters invite the viewer to open the email. Many brands optimize for mobile devices first and there's a good reason that you do the same for your email newsletter.

There maybe a very small use case where the desktop is a priority, in some specific B2B interactions. In such cases as well the standard width of 600px is recommended while setting the height of elements being optimized to move towards the main body section of the email newsletter. In most cases, design for a mobile phone first would take precedence.

The Designer

The design of your email newsletter is still an important task in having a successful marketing campaign. A personalized, on-brand email newsletter design, is the best way to go forward. The designer you choose should have a mix of skills between Email Newsletter design and digital marketing tools. Someone who is comfortable with the design language and your email marketing service of choice.

The Designer for your newsletter essentially has 2 tasks.

• Make the objective of your email marketing campaign easy to achieve in a viewer-friendly comprehensive email newsletter.

• Make the newsletter template as personalized and on-brand as possible while still innovating to within those limitations to design new graphical elements.

This means that they should be comfortable designing the newsletter and understand the output processes required to achieve your internal and external objectives. A professional Designer and Digital Marketer would be ideal in this case.

In the case that you choose to download any templates and get them done yourself, you should use professionally pre-made templates for some uniqueness and authenticity. These are generally affordable and allow for some level of personalization. We strongly advise using free templates at any stage in your business.

Output Processes

By now we have covered the important considerations for a The only next step is sending it out to your subscribers and audiences.

You would need two output processes here on to go forward with you email newsletter:

• Quality Assurance

  Designers perform their internal quality analysis but it is vital you check its viability on displays and if you'd want something altered before it goes live. This is highly critical for a pre-made email template.

• Setting it up in your email marketing service

  If you are already using an email marketing service, a digital marketing professional will be able to help set up your newsletter.

What is my process for an email newsletter design?

Newsletters are designed with a clear intent and startegy. They should positively reflect your brand. By using a combination of images, animations, and text, you are ensured an excellent email sign-off. The process begins with a small consultation call and a brief form requesting your company assets and employee particulars. I then create a concept for your email signature, you can then request a revision to the design.

At Creatibly, we create one-of-a-kind, custom email signature designs that are unique to you and only you. We create effective and professional email signature designs without the use of an email signature template or

At Creatibly, we sweat the details of the process so you don't have to. Your project includes:

Newsletter Design

• One design

• One round of revisions

Newsletter Development

• Same as above but with development using HTML

Revision Round

• Update or revise the information on your email newsletter

• 1 complete round of revisions

• Please inquire if unsure

What do you need to provide?

• High-resolution logo

• High-resolution images

• Written copy

• Contact information

• Any other information you would like added

FAQs

What is an Email Newsletter?

A newsletter is a marketing tool used by organizations, brands, and personal brand owners to share relevant and valuable information with their network of customers, prospects, and subscribers. Newsletters give you direct access to your audience’s inbox, allowing you to share engaging content, promote sales and drive traffic to your website. They are created with business intent in mind like driving more sales, funneling traffic to your landing page, or educating and engaging with customers.

What size is an Email Newsletter?

An email newsletter has a recommended width of 600 pixels to be legible and support all platforms with mobile devices taking precedence. The height can be as long as required but is generally optimized with user experience in mind.

Should I subscribe to Email clients for my Email marketing?

Your email newsletter design is only good if it is opened by your prospects. While you can use free clients like Gmail and Outlook, they are fairly limited. A dedicated email marketing platform will make sure that your email newsletters are seen. Be it a welcome email, payment confirmations, or dedicated marketing emails; an email client is one of the greatest marketing tools you can subscribe to for your business.

Some even offer a free download and trial for new users.

How do I make an Email newsletter for my business?

We have covered, in detail, the elements and prerequisites for an email newsletter in the sections above. You can create an email newsletter with the combined help of a copywriter, a designer, and a digital marketing specialist. You can also use an email template if your business is in its early stages. A successful email newsletter takes in a lot of consideration to effectively land and is opened in your prospect's inbox. The best way to design them yourself is to subscribe to an email client with newsletter templates. Most offer a drag-and-drop editor for your brand logo and other related assets.

Who should make an E-mail newsletter?

An email newsletter is a fantastic marketing tool for your business. There are no restrictions on who should make an email newsletter but it's more goal-oriented. If you are at a stage where in your own business, you need to be in contact with your customers, learn more about them, drive leads to your site, and leverage online marketing; an email newsletter with relevant content is great way to engage with customers and all your subscribers.

How to write copy for my Email Newsletter?

Good copywriting is an integral part of a successful email newsletter. There are a few considerations for a subject line, body content, and CTAs. There is no direct guide but you should keep your copy brief, concise, and easy to understand. The subject line must be short and attention-grabbing. The introductory text must be short since it will show up in the email preview and the CTA must be direct and the final action from it should be predictable.

Have a clear goal for your email newsletter and understand if it entertains, educates or informs your reader. Use a similar tone for copy and combine it with an effective professional design or email template of your choosing.