How to Create

Email
Newsletters
That Don’t Suck
 Contents.
03 Introduction
05 Why Send Email Newsletters? Do I
Even Need One?
11 The Anatomy of a Great Email
Newsletter
23 How to Measure Your Email Newsletter
34 Email Newsletter Mistakes Nearly
Everyone Makes
45 Examples of Great Email Newsletters
54 Conclusion & Checklist

2
 Introduction.

I f you’ve ever been on the receiving end of an email newsletter, you

know that these marketing messages can be as dull as a dishwasher.
I get it -- when you’re not sure what to write, but you feel like an email
has to go out, why not send an update about products, services, and
what’s going on at your company?

Unfortunately, the result is often a whole lot of generic, irrelevant

content sent to a poorly segmented list — and that results in low open/
clickthrough rates and lots of unsubscribes. That means best case
scenario, your reputation is dinged in your subscribers’ eyes; worst
case scenario, your reputation is dinged by Return Path and future
email deliverability is negatively impacted.

But there are awesome email newsletters out there. So what separates
the triumphs from the tragedies? And how do you ensure your email
newsletter is successful? We’ll dive into these questions later in this
guide, but first, let’s define what an email newsletter is, and what it isn’t.

3
 An email newsletter is an email from a business that communicates
announcements about products, services, industry, or general company
information. It includes a mix of content, like event reminders, surveys,
educational information about your product, service, or industry, and
promotions and other offers.

An email newsletter is not a dedicated promotional email that contains

information about just one offer; a digest that simply summarizes a
roundup of content you’ve published; a lead nurturing email (although
a side effect certainly may be a better nurtured lead); or a transactional
email that provides order information or prompts a shopper to complete
a purchase. These other types of emails are important parts of your
email marketing strategy, and you can learn more about them in this
guide.

Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s discuss why you would send
an email newsletter, and how it could help you hit your goals.

4
01
Why Send
Email
Newsletters?
Do I Even Need
One?

5
 M ost marketers have been there — you’re sitting around a
conference room, trying to figure out how to best engage leads and
customers, sell more product, or just “stay top-of-mind” for your target
audience, and someone decides there’s a solution that can solve all of
those problems at once: an email newsletter!

And then suddenly it’s you that’s been chosen to do it. Oh, and make
sure that open and clickthrough rates don’t dip. That sound good?

I’ve been in that situation before, and I was worried. Even though email
newsletters are one of the most common types of emails to send, they
are actually some of the hardest to do right. It’s hard because it includes
a mix of different types of content about different parts of your business,
including event reminders, surveys, educational information about your
product, service, or industry, and promotions. And because it’s not an
email designed to serve one purpose — say, about one promotion, one
digest of previously published content, one lead nurturing email, or one
transactional email providing order information, email newsletters have
a difficult time trying to get readers to complete a call-to-action.

6
 … But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them. If done right, you
could develop a really engaged subscriber base, and potentially nurture
them into qualified leads and customers. At the very “least,” you could
engage your company’s evangelists, and they could help bring in
business. And that’s definitely something you don’t want to miss out on.
Repeat after me:

Not everyone needs a newsletter.

Actually, most people don’t need a newsletter. In fact, most of you

marketers out there probably have better things to do with your time
than search for content and compile it into a messy template that no
one’s going to read in the first place. Or your newsletter might be wildly
successful and an integral part of your marketing strategy. Here’s how
to determine if you should have a newsletter:

REASONS You Might Need a Newsletter:

.. Your boss is making you send one out.

You have an internal newsletter (in which case this guide isn’t

..
all that relevant).

You have had recent proven success with newsletters.

You think you will have success with this method and it is the
best use of your time (you have nothing else to do?).

7
 Advantages of Newsletters:

. Spread brand awareness. By building habitual communication

with your email subscribers, you enable them to recognize your

.
brand and associate it with a positive sentiment.

Leverage existing content. Many companies do quick

summaries of their most popular blog posts and link to the

.
articles from their newsletter.

Include different types of content. For instance, the same

newsletter can contain a popular blog post, a new offer, an
announcement of an upcoming event, information about a

.
discount, and a link to a survey.

Guaranteed reach (unlike social media).

“
How BUzzFeeD does it:
“Email is such a natural fit for BuzzFeed because you never
have to explain to people how to share it. People see it and
go, ‘Oh, my buddy or my mom or my coworker would really
love this.’ They click the forward button and just send it along.
It’s that easy. Because BuzzFeed is built entirely around what
people what to share, email has been great for us.”

- Dan Oshinsky, BuzzFeed’s Newsletter Editor

8
 Things to Consider When Deciding:

In your industry, are there successful email newsletters that people like
to subscribe to? What’s in them? With the resources you have available
to you — budget, time and internal support — could you be successful?

..
It’s a lot of work, you will need the time and manpower to:

Proofread copy

..
Create compelling calls-to-action

Design it to work for multiple inboxes and devices

..
Avoid spam triggers

Brainstorm clickable subject lines

Unlike blogging, there’s no redo or update button for

.
newsletters

You need to have a lot of content/other stuff going on for a

good newsletter.

You shouldn’t waste your time working on an email newsletter if it

isn’t right for your marketing. So do some research. In your industry,
are there successful email newsletters that people like to subscribe
to? What’s in them? With the resources you have available to you —
budget, time, and internal support — could you be successful?

9
 Then, re-examine your business’ goals. Are they trying to increase the
number of leads? Better qualify leads to speak with salespeople? Close
more deals? Or retain more customers?

If your industry isn’t really interested in email newsletters or you lack the
internal support to send them out, it might be time to reconsider. Or if
your goals don’t line up with what a newsletter could accomplish, your
time might be better spent setting up lead nurturing email workflows, or
not even sending emails in the first place — perhaps creating content
for your blog, instead.

So gather some data, create a plan of action (either for a successful

newsletter, or another activity), and go chat with your superior. Even if
you disagree with his or her vision in an email newsletter, your boss will
be glad you came prepared with a plan for success.

Okay, let’s say you’ve found that you should do an email newsletter.
What next? Head over to section two to uncover email newsletter best
practices you should follow.

10
 02
The Anatomy
Of A Great
Email
Newsletter

11
 A s I mentioned earlier in this guide, one of the biggest problems
with email newsletters is that they are often cluttered and unfocused
because they are supporting every aspect of your business. Product
news goes right next to PR stories, blog posts go next to a random
event week … it’s kind of a mess. Email — whether it’s a newsletter or
not — needs one common thread to hold it together.

A way to help reduce the randomness of an email newsletter is by

keeping it to one very specific topic. So instead of it being about your
company in general, maybe it’s dedicated to one vertical.

For example, if HubSpot were to send out a newsletter, we could do

one solely on social media for business. In it, we could gather together
recent blog posts on social media marketing, events that all social
media marketers should go to, and maybe even a quiz of the best social
media tools you use. By tying together those pieces of content all under
the umbrella of social media for business, the email newsletter would be
much more focused and engaging.

12
 ANATOMY TIP #1:
Balance the content of
your newsletter to be
90% educational and 10%
promotional.

Chances are, your email newsletter subscribers aren’t down to hear

about your products and services 100% of the time. While they may
love you and want to hear from you, there’s only so much shilling you
can do before they tune out.

Case in point: I have a thing for shoes, and I especially love this one
shoe site. I willingly opted in to the company’s email list, but it now
sends me emails 2-3 times a day to buy, buy, buy … and when I see its
sender name pop up in my inbox, I want to scream. Now, if they sent
me educational content — maybe about the latest styles of shoes, or
how to pair certain styles with certain outfits — I might be more inclined
to buy from them, or at least start opening their emails again.

Don’t be that company. In your email newsletters, get rid of the self
promotion (most of the time) and focus on sending your subscribers
educational, relevant, timely information. Unless you actually have an
exciting, big piece of news about your product, service, or company,
leave out the promotional parts.

13
 ANATOMY TIP #2:
Set expectations on your
‘Subscribe’ page.

Once you’ve figured out your newsletter’s focus and content balance,
make sure you’re properly communicating about them on your
subscribe landing page.

Get specific: Tell potential subscribers exactly what will be in the

newsletter as well as how often they should expect to hear from you. As
a subscriber, wouldn’t that be awesome? You’d go in with open eyes
knowing exactly who you will be receiving email from, what they will be
sending you, and how often they’ll be sending it to you. As a marketer,
having this information up front will help diminish your unsubscribe and
spam rates as well. Here’s an example of this from Gilt City:

14
 “
How BUzzFeeD does it:
“We have this big daily list that is more around what’s
buzzing and being shared on our site right now. Instead
of trying to segment down on that list into different types
of audiences, we’ve created a bunch of different types of
newsletters people can opt in to. If you go to our email
newsletter subscription page, we’re up to 14 different
email newsletters right now (and expect to grow more over
the next year). These very specific email newsletters let
people say, ‘I love the cats, but what I really want to find
out about is about your book coverage. Send me those
links only.’”

- Dan Oshinsky, BuzzFeed’s Newsletter Editor

15
 Anatomy TIP #3:
Get creative with email
subject lines.

Even if your subscribers sign up for your emails, there’s no guarantee

that they will open your emails once they get them in their inbox. Many
marketers try increasing familiarity with their subscribers by keeping the
subject line the same each day, week, or month that they send it.

But let’s face it, those subject lines get old — fast — for subscribers.
Why? Because there’s no incentive from the subject line to click on that
specific email right this instant. A better approach would be to try to
have a different, creative, engaging subject line for each newsletter you
send.

One company who does this really well is Thrillist. Here’s a collection of
email newsletters I’ve received from them over the past few days:

16
 Anatomy TIP #4:
Pick one primary
call-to-action.

IF YOU ONLY CLICK ONE THING,

CLICK THIS.

Okay, part of what makes a newsletter a newsletter is that you’re

featuring multiple pieces of content with multiple calls-to-action (CTAs).
But, that doesn’t mean you should let those CTAs all have equal
prominence.

Instead, let there be one head honcho CTA — just one main thing that
you would like your subscribers to do, and the rest of the CTAs are a “in
case you have time.” Whether it’s simply to click through to see a blog
post or just to forward the email to a friend, make it super simple for
your subscribers to know what you want them to do — and then do it.

17
 anatomy TIP #5:
Keep design and copy
minimal.

Like I said before, a newsletter can easily feel cluttered because of

its nature. The trick for email marketers to make a successful email
newsletter look uncluttered revolves around two things: concise copy
and enough white space in the design.

Concise copy is key because you don’t

actually want to have your subscribers hang
out and read your email all day.

You want to send them elsewhere — your website or blog, for instance
— to actually consume the whole piece of content. Concise copy gives
your subscribers a taste of your content — just enough that they want
to click and learn more.

White space is key in email newsletters because it helps visually

alleviate the cluttered feel, and on mobile, makes it much easier for
people to click the right link.

18
 Anatomy TIP #6:
Make sure images have alt
text.

Given that visual content is incredibly important to the rest of your

marketing activities, it’d make sense that you’d want to include them in
your emails … right?

Right. But email’s a little bit trickier. Most of the time, people won’t have
images enabled, so you’ve got to make sure your images have one
essential component: alt text. Alt text is the alternative text that appears
when images aren’t loaded in an email. This is especially important if
your CTAs are images — you want to
make sure people are clicking even
without the image enabled.

Each email marketing program is

different, but you can [click here]
for a tutorial on how to add alt text to
email. You can also see an example
of alt text in action in the image to the
right:

19
 Anatomy TIP #7:
Make it easy for people to
unsubscribe.

This seems a little counter-intuitive, but it’s key if you want to maintain
an active, engaged subscriber list. Don’t use weird language like “Alter
your communication with us.” Don’t hide an unsubscribe button behind
an image without alt text. Besides keeping your list healthy, having
a clear unsubscribe process will help ensure your email isn’t marked
SPAM before it hits the rest of your list’s inbox.

You can see an example of this below:

20
 How BUzzFeeD does it:

“
“After working on the newsletter for over a year, we kind of
have a formula for what content performs well. We know
what type of content people love to share, what type of
content people love to see in their inboxes.

People love sharing content on email that makes them

seem smart or helps inform their friends or colleagues or
causes them to react. When content makes them angry or
happy or sad, they tend to share it. So when I’m picking
content for the daily newsletter, I tend to choose that type
of content, a mix of stuff that’s gonna make you smile and
make you curious.”

- Dan Oshinsky, BuzzFeed’s Newsletter Editor

21
 Anatomy TIP #8:
Test, test, test.

I know I just listed out a whole bunch of “best practices” to make sure
you’re doing email newsletters right, but you’ve also got to find out
what works for your company and your list. Just like different cultures
of people prefer different things, different groups of email subscribers
prefer different things.

So use these email newsletter best practices as a jumping off point

… and then experiment to find your secret sauce. Run an A/B test on
subject lines. Change up your CTA copy. Heck, even try not including
images. The world is your oyster for your email newsletter, so find out
what it likes.

Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s determine what you
should be measuring in your email newsletters.

22
03
HOW TO
MEASURE
YOUR EMAIL
NEWSLETTER

23
 What if your
newsletter was
tanking, but because
you weren’t checking
the hard data, you
kept on doing it?

Talk about a lot of wasted time and resources. To make sure you’re
armed with the right information to guide your marketing decisions, you
should keep your eye on the following metrics. They’ll give you a pretty
comprehensive picture of how well your newsletter is doing, which’ll
help you figure out whether you should be investing time in email
newsletters.

24
 Clickthroughs

One of the reasons you’re sending an email newsletter in the first place
is to get people to click on something (or a few things) ... so tracking
the number of clicks you get on newsletters over time is a great way to
judge if your newsletter is useful. If the number is slowly going down
newsletter after newsletter, you might need to rethink your newsletter
strategy.

Also, because newsletters have many different elements people can

click on, you should see which links get the most clicks within the email.
That information can help you adjust your strategy for choosing and
arranging content within the newsletter based on what its goal is.

Notice that I didn’t (and won’t) mention opens before clicks. Opens are
notoriously hard to measure. An email is only counted as ‘opened’ if the
recipient also receives the images embedded in that message, and a
large percentage of your email users likely have image-blocking enabled
on their email client. This means that even if they open the email,
they won’t be included in your open rate, making it an inaccurate and
unreliable metric for marketers. Sure, you can keep an eye on the metric
and react if it dives drastically from one newsletter to another, but the
metric itself doesn’t give you reliable information.

25
RED FLAG!

Your clickthrough rates

are dismal.

Are your email newsletter clickthrough rates consistently hovering below

4.3%? According to Epsilon’s most recent study, that’s the industry
average. While your industry may be different, it’s a good benchmark to
keep in mind. If your email newsletter clickthrough rates are way below
that, you’ve got a problem. And if that’s been a problem for you for a
while, go on and cut your email newsletter and focus on creating more
targeted, clickworthy emails.

You’re not ready to give up on improving email newsletter clickthrough

rates? Read on.

Here’s a post with some fabulous tips for increasing email clickthrough
rates. If you’re reading this now, chances are you can also read that
article, so I won’t steal much of its spotlight. But one of my favorite tips
in that post is to hit your subscribers over the head with a call-to-action
— it’s the one fix that could give you immediate positive results.

26
 Conversions

Besides measuring what people are clicking on in your emails, you

should be looking at what they do after the click. Do they convert on the
landing page form? Or maybe sign up for the event you advertised? Or
maybe just click on a CTA in a blog post?

Regardless of what you want people to do after they click on your email,
you should be tracking those actions. The reason you send emails isn’t
just to get clicks — you want people to do something after they click,
whether it be consuming a piece of content or becoming a customer.
If your email tool is hooked up to the rest of your marketing software,
tracking this metric becomes easy.

List Growth

Over time, you’ll want to get more and more people clicking and
converting on your email newsletters because the more they do those
things, the more likely it is you’ll hit your monthly goals. More people in
your list generally means more people will click on your email, and more
people will convert on the content. Sure, list growth isn’t everything, but
you need to have enough people getting your newsletters in the first
place to make the rest of your numbers follow suit.

27
RED FLAG!
No one is subscribing to
your newsletter.

If you’re not growing your subscriber list, you’ve got a problem. No

matter what your goals are — generating leads, closing customers, or
developing a vibrant, happy customer community — your list should be
bigger from month to month.

More people in your list means more opportunities to reach your goals,
so if your list is staying stagnant from your initial send or even petering
off, you might want to think about whether you want to continue your
email newsletter.

If you’d like to improve what you already have, take a look at how
people sign up to get your newsletter in the first place. Consider new,
frictionless ways for people to sign up for your blog — maybe as a
widget in your blog sidebar or as a check mark on a landing page.
Maybe you run a Twitter campaign to get people to sign up. The
important thing here is to get creative — and if multiple attempts at
generating new subscribers don’t work, swiftly get rid of your email
newsletter. Please, whatever you do, just don’t buy any lists.

28
 Forward Rate

This metric is actually essential for list growth. It sounds weird, but
growing your email newsletter list by emailing people who are already
in your database works because of the possibility of forwarding. So
if you’re trying to get people to forward your emails, you also need to
keep an eye on how many people are getting the content forwarded to
them.

Your “forward rate” isn’t a set-in-stone number — you’ll need to look

at a composite of metrics to see how forwards impact your email
newsletters and database growth. Email marketing programs can’t tell
how many people click the “Forward” button on an email, but there are

.
two ways you can get an idea of your “forward rate”:

If the content you link to in the email newsletter has a form on

.
it, you can track the number of conversions on that form.

You can include a call-to-action with a short, trackable link to

forward the email to a friend, and track the clicks on that link.

Neither metric is perfect, but they can give you a general picture of how
forward-friendly your email is.

29
 Delivery Rate

Generally, we’re talking about all of those emails that aren’t hard and
soft bounces — bounced emails that can’t be sent to an inbox because
the inbox is full or the address isn’t valid, among other reasons. So your
delivery rate is the total number of emails sent minus the total number
of bounces, divided by the total number of emails sent.

Your delivery rate should be above 95% — if you notice it slipping

below that in general, try to clean up your list. If you notice one
newsletter in particular has a low delivery rate, see if there are any
spammy red flags that would make an ISP block your email from being
received.

30
 RED FLAG!
Your spam rates are going
through the roof.
If you’re buying lists, you pretty much deserve the spam rates you get ...
but if you’ve organically grown your list, it’s incredibly frustrating to have
people mark your emails as “spam.” The older and more unengaged
the list is, the more likely you are to get hit with those spam complaints
— so you should go ahead and cleanse that list to only newer, engaged
subscribers.

But if you’re noticing that a targeted, fairly recent list is hitting spam on
your email newsletter, it might be time to close shop. While subscribers
may want to receive emails from you, the newsletter probably isn’t the
right approach in that situation. Go on — it’s okay to let it go.

However, it’s possible there’s been a mistake. Maybe your subscribers

mistakenly signed up for the newsletter or had a very mean competitor
sign them up as a joke or something. Regardless, if you want to make
sure your email subscribers are truly prepared to engage with you from
the get-go, try enabling a double opt-in for new subscribers. Most email
providers have this functionality built in — you just have to set it up
yourself. HubSpot customers, here’s a tutorial on how to set yours up.

31
 Overall ROI

If you’re going to use email newsletters to grow your business, you

should be able to tie their efforts to your bottom line. With closed-loop
analytics, you can figure how many visitors, leads, and customers your
email newsletter content generates, and how much revenue they all
bring in. This is definitely the most difficult of the metrics to track, but if
you can use your marketing software to find these numbers, your boss
will be very, very happy.

All in all, there are really three main takeaways here:

1 Always make sure you’re keeping an eye out for your email
newsletter performance.

2 If any of these red flags pop up, run tests to see if metrics can
improve.

33 Run a few tests and nothing improved? Get rid of your email
newsletter.

Seriously. If it’s not working, just get rid of it. While your boss may have
wanted an email newsletter in the first place, they’d much rather have a
solid, successful email marketing strategy.

32
RED FLAG!
You’re not hitting your
marketing goals.
Last but certainly not least, you’ve got to step out your email metrics
bubble for a second. If you’re so focused on open rates, clickthrough
rates, spam rates, and the numbers on your list, you’re going to be
missing out on the whole point of you sending email.

Whether you’re using email newsletters to generate leads, get

customers, or delight customers, you’ve got to always take a step
back and see if your email newsletters are accomplishing those
goals. (Closed-loop analytics can help you tie your company goals to
marketing activities.) If you’re not hitting your overall marketing goals
with your email newsletter, it’s probably time to reconsider.

If you’re hesitant to completely cut your newsletter from your activities,

try aligning the content you feature in the newsletter more tightly with
your marketing goals. For example, if lead generation is your marketing
goal, you want to make sure nearly every component of the newsletter
drives toward that goal. Take a good, hard look at your content and its
metrics to see how it’s achieving your goals — or not — and then only
feature the best content in the newsletter to reach your goal.

33
04
email
newsletter
mistakes
nearly
everyone
makes
34
 “It’ll have everything our
customers care about, all in
one place.”

“Our list will be different —

people will look forward to
getting our newsletter.”

“Since we’re only sending it

once a month, it’ll be a breeze
to put together.”

Any of these optimistic declarations sound familiar? While all of these

things may become true for a few lucky individuals, most often, email
newsletters flop. They become an uninteresting mush of content that
people automatically ignore, archive, delete, or straight up unsubscribe
from.

That being said, here are the most common mistakes nearly every
marketer makes when creating an email newsletter, and how you can
avoid them:

35
 Mistake #1: Having a Poorly
Segmented List

As with any email marketing, the content in your email newsletter

should be relevant to your audience. And that doesn’t happen without
list segmentation. The problem is, often email newsletters are sent as
the catch-all content — it’s so generic, it can apply to everybody on
your email list!

Or no one at all ... because as we’ll discuss in more detail later in this
section, generic content doesn’t get you far. Your email newsletter
should only go out to those recipients who are interested in the subject
matter of the newsletter. I can tell you right now that there are people
on HubSpot’s own email list that don’t give a whit (not a typo) about
marketing automation, but are extremely interested in how to get leads
from social media; and vice versa. If my newsletter focuses on the
latest social media developments — is it wise to send that newsletter to
subscribers who wanted to hear about marketing automation software?
I think not.

36
 There are two ways to remedy this. The first is to marry the interests
of both list segments and write a newsletter about, say, social media
marketing automation. The more list segments you have, however, the
more difficult it will become to create newsletter content that applies
to everyone. If you’re facing this problem, the better solution is to
tailor content to each list segment. This means either segmenting lists
yourself and creating newsletter content that is relevant to that list
segment, or letting recipients opt in to newsletters about a specific
subject matter.

Finally, whenever you create a call-to-action on your website for a visitor

to sign up for your email newsletter, be as clear as possible about the
content of that newsletter. Setting these expectations up front will help
you capture those who truly want the content your newsletter will cover,
and filter out those who will ultimately be disappointed with the content
of your email.

37
 Mistake #2: Information
Overload

Email newsletters often suffer from a few types of information overload:

either the breadth of information covered is too wide, the quantity of
information is too overwhelming for any reader to actually consume,
and/or the information is just plain not interesting. Let’s break down how
to avoid each of these problems.

We’ll begin with the issue of covering too wide a breadth of information,
which we touched on earlier in this section. If you send an email about
too many subjects, it’s too unfocused to be relevant to anyone.

Let’s play a game of “one of these things is not like the other” to
demonstrate the concept further. You run email marketing for a clown
college, and for your next email newsletter, you want to touch on the

..
following topics:

Clown financial aid application deadline

.
Clown work study programs

.
Clown intramural sports leagues

Student loan options for clowns

38
 What would you leave out? The information about sports leagues, right?
It’s not that some of your prospective and current clown students aren’t
interested in sports clubs at the school, it’s just that not all of them will
be. Create a newsletter that talks about what that entire list segment
cares about (in this scenario, that’s paying for school) and save the
sports talk for another list segment that cares about extracurriculars.

Just as you should provide your readers a focused subject matter in

your emails, you should help them maintain that focus by limiting the
amount of text in the email. Often times, email newsletter creators will
try to write an entire article about a particular subject matter — but is
an email really the place to detail what options clowns have for student
loans? If it requires more than a couple sentences of explanation, a web
page is the more appropriate venue.

Write a brief description of the content in

your email newsletter, then include a link
to read more on your website so your reader
isn’t overwhelmed with text in the email.

Not only is this easier to consume, but it also drives visitors to your
website, provides opportunities for reconversion, and gets you more
indexable pages filled with great content to improve your SEO!

39
 Finally, newsletters often suffer from talking about information that
no one cares about, which usually takes the form of self-promotional
content. It’s not that you shouldn’t talk about your product, service,
or company — that’s part of the definition of an email newsletter. But
there’s a way to present that information that demonstrates value for the
reader, instead of appearing like a relatively meaningless press release
or announcement.

Ask yourself the

“so what?” of any
announcement you’re
making.

For example, why does it matter to the reader that you’re launching
a new product? Will it make them better at their jobs? If so, how?
Announce the feature, and then explain the end benefit of that feature
for your reader. If you can’t think of an end benefit, nix the content from
your newsletter.

40
 Mistake #3: Competing
Calls-to-Action

In most email marketing, with every new call-to-action you include,

the effectiveness of each is diluted more and more. So in an email
newsletter with so many different pieces of content contained therein —
surveys, deadlines, offers, product launches, etc. — it’s easy to break
one of the cardinal rules of email marketing: including only one call-to-
action!

So how do you get past this? The first step is acceptance — there
will be more than one call-to-action in your email newsletter. But that
doesn’t mean they have to compete with one another. Take a step back,
and ask yourself what you want your recipients to do when they read
your newsletter. What’s the point?

CLICK THIS

NO, CLICK THIS

WAIT, THIS TOO

41
 Let’s revisit our clown financial aid example. Perhaps the email
marketing manager decided the point of the newsletter is to show
prospective students the options they have at their disposal to pay for
school — financial aid, work study, and student loans. These may all
point to different pages on the website when the reader clicks through
on the story, but the call-to-action on each of those pages could point
to one all-inclusive guide about paying for clown college. The end goal
is the same: getting clowns to pay for school. Each of those pieces of
content, the pages a reader lands on when they click through, and the
calls-to-action available to them on those pages all contribute to that
goal.

CLICK THIS FIRST

THIS NEXT

THEN, THIS

You can also use design to emphasize one particular story over others.
For example, if the financial aid deadline is the most important part of
the newsletter, it should act as a feature story and take up more room in
the newsletter than the rest of the stories. In fact, let’s look at how else
design can make or break your email newsletter.

42
 Mistake #4: Inconsistent
Design and Layout

Because email newsletters are a compilation

of stories, many businesses change the
appearance of the emails from send
to send to accommodate the ever-
changing content. It makes sense —
images could be different sizes from
week to week, there might be an
uneven balance of content, or you
can’t decide which content should be prioritized.
But instead of making the difficult choices, marketers often
just adapt their newsletter design to accommodate that send’s specific
needs.

Don’t do it! Not only does it take lots of time to edit your email template,
but it confuses your regular readers. Use a standard format for every
single newsletter so it is recognizable to your subscribers. That means
the same layout, the same image alignment, and the same placement
of links and calls-to-action so your reader can scan and find the
information they want.

43
 Mistake #5: Vague
Subject Lines

This is an easy fix, but such a common email newsletter faux pas.
Often, the subject of an email newsletter is something along the lines of
Weekly [Company X] Newsletter or Monthly [Product Y] Update.

What does this mean? What

will the reader learn?

The interesting part of the email isn’t the frequency at which the
recipient receives it — it’s the juicy information you’re divulging!

Email newsletters have the opportunity to be chock full of interesting

content, and as such are a very useful inbound marketing tool. So it’s
a shame when marketers put significant time and effort into compiling
and sharing their best announcements, offers, and content in an email
newsletter, only to have it fall on deaf ears. Use these tips to ensure
your next email newsletter is a smashing success and leads to an ever-
increasing, dedicated list of subscribers that look forward to reading
your email content.

44
05
EXAMPLES OF
GREAT EMAIL
NEWSLETTERS

45
 T o help inspire you to make the best email newsletter for your
company possible, we compiled seven of our absolute favorite email
newsletters. They are all fabulous for different reasons — some
have exceptional design, some have exceptional copy, some have
exceptional calls-to-action ... but all are excellent at solving for their
subscribers’ needs.

So go on, check out these examples and get inspired to make your own
email newsletters even better!

46
 theSkimm

If you want to stay up on what’s happening in the world and have some
delightful writing delivered to your inbox first thing in the morning, look
no further than theSkimm. It’s a daily roundup of what’s happened in the
news in short, punch paragraphs. Bonus: You don’t have to click out of
the email to read more for the news if you don’t want to.

For your own email marketing, theSkimm is the place to go if you’re

looking for writing inspiration or for emails without much visual content.
Simply divine.

47
 NoshOn.It

NoshOn.It’s email newsletters are insanely well-designed and

supplemented with visual content — oh, and also helpful if you’re an
aspiring foodie. Just check out the examples below to see what I mean.

The layout goes from having one column to having almost two with
“truss,” “cook,” and “carve” — a perfect way to balance a featured
piece of content with the supplemental content of an email newsletter.
They also selected one topic for the whole newsletter and then visually
connected those dots for the readers with the red labels on the images.

48
 Litmus

You’d hope that an email marketing testing company would have great
emails ... and Litmus definitely does.

While the content of the emails is certainly interesting, I’m especially

digging the design — the blocks of color help break up the newsletter
into sections that are easy to differentiate.

Bonus: The color scheme makes the newsletter, as a whole, look

cohesive, yet it lets the sections stand out from each other.

49
 Hacker Newsletter

Not all of us are hackers, but we can all appreciate a well-put-together

email newsletter. Hacker News, a site that aggregates top news in the
tech and startup worlds, may not send an email that everyone reading
this blog would love to click on, but it sends an awesome roundup of
top stories every day that we could emulate in our own marketing.

The newsletter is clean and minimal, but still sends a ton of really great
content its subscribers’ way. The way it distills potentially overwhelming
information is by bucketing content into sections. The newsletter also
looks very similar to the site, so for those who love the site and how it’s
laid out (aka people who are subscribed to the email newsletter), it’s a
comforting, familiar way to consume content.

50
 General Assembly

With Gmail’s new image update allowing images to automatically

appear in emails, they’re more important than ever to your newsletter.
And there’s lots of creative things you can do with images in your emails
— such as use animated GIFs.

Check out the newsletter from General Assembly, an organization

that helps expand professionals’ skill sets, to see this in action (the
screenshots above just don’t do it the justice it deserves). Prominently
featuring the GIF at the top and having an otherwise minimal layout
makes this newsletter attractive but also incredibly scannable.

If your subscribers are just looking to get some quick info in a

newsletter format, think about how you could replicate some of General
Assembly’s newsletter success.

51
 Muck Rack Daily

Muck Rack impressed me within an hour of signing up for their email

list. I was looking for great email newsletters to use for a blog post
(sound familiar?) and I heard that Muck Rack had a great one. I wanted
to see it for myself and signed up.

Within an hour, I received my first email from them with the subject line:
“MRD: ‘Funny, clever and not full of gifs.’” Obviously, I like all three of
these things, so I click through. I see the email below.

The design is gorgeous — the bold fonts and colors are striking, but not
distracting. The copy is flawless (what else would you expect from a
company catering to journalists?). It’s scrollable and engaging. Just the
perfect email newsletter package.
52
 Medium

Last, but certainly not least, is Medium, the recently popular blogging
platform/media site. They have a ton of people publishing posts on
their site every day — which is a lot of content for the average person
to filter through. To help bring great content to the surface, Medium
uses a weekly email newsletter. And after I open this newsletter every
week, I end up going to visit several Medium posts without fail. Mission
accomplished for Medium, right?

Here’s why: The newsletter — similar to Hacker News’ newsletter — is

pretty much only text. But because of the way that Medium uses text
variety and section dividers, they’re able to give you a ton of content in
one email without it feeling overwhelming.

I really wanted to use their email in here to remind you that you don’t
need to be a visual content creation wiz to have awesome newsletters
(though that certainly won’t hurt). As long as you are solving the needs
of your subscribers, you’re going to have a great newsletter.

53
06
conclusion &
Checklist

54
 N ow, you’re probably realizing that sending an email newsletter
requires juggling a lot of moving pieces. You’ve got to worry about
proofreading the copy, creating compelling calls-to-action, designing
the email to work for multiple inboxes and devices, avoiding any spam
triggers, and brainstorming clickable subject lines, all while staying
within the confines of email law.

(Oh, and if you mess any of it up, there’s no “redo” or “update” button.)

So here’s a comprehensive checklist to make sure you don’t miss out

on any of these crucial steps:

55
 Email Newsletter Checklist

Determine your newsletter’s goal.

Gather your content.

Design your template.

Add in body content.

Add in personalization tokens and smart content.

Choose your subject line and sender name.

Tidy up loose strings.

Make sure you’re legally compliant.

Test different browsers and email providers.

Send.

Analyze and iterate.

56
 Send better emails.

Learn more about

HubSpot’s Email tool

+1 (888) 758-1662

Have questions about how HubSpot can help generate more

traffic, leads, and customers? Wondering how the integrated
platform works, and how it can work for you? Looking for
some feedback on your inbound marketing strategy?

Give us a call at 1 (888) 758-1662 and we’ll connect you with

a marketing specialist who can answer your questions.

57
 written by @gsosk & @corey_bos

Ginny Soskey and Corey Eridon

are both bloggers for HubSpot’s
blog (blog.hubspot.com),
creating content about inbound
marketing and sales.

compiled & designed by @bleaning

Brittany Leaning is one of HubSpot’s

Content Strategists (formerly Social
Media Manager), creating helpful
ebooks, templates, tools, and other
fun resources for marketers.

58
 What’d you think?

Click Here to Rate This Resource

(It takes 2 seconds!)

59