Email Marketing With a Purpose

What makes an email newsletter that is worth reading?

Email marketing is about directly engaging your target audience periodically.  But it’s only effective if your audience actually opens and reads the emails that you send.

For a freelance web design business, the email newsletter must pack in substance.  It’s got to contain useful and interesting content- something more than simply promoting a portfolio and services.

Part of this year’s revamping of my freelance web design business included a new monthly email, titled “The Morning Brew”.  It’s aimed at my current and past clients, prospects, and small business owners.  The goal is to provide useful and straightforward tips, ideas, and industry news to help readers become more web savvy.  Have a look here, check out the archives and sign up if you want.

What goes into each issue?

• The newsletter is branded with a unique title, “The Morning Brew”.  It has a nicely crafted HTML email design, which appears to have been created with a good amount of time and effort each month, and that’s the truth.
• Every issue has 3 featured articles / topics.  These consist of 2-3 short paragraphs talking about a useful web app, social media tip, a blurb and callout to a recent blog post, an interesting website worth visiting, etc.
• I include a note about what we’ve been up to at CasJam Media, but I don’t make it the primary topic of the newsletter.  Sometimes I’ll include a few screenshots from the portfolio in the sidebar of the email.
• I begin each issue with a personal note from me, followed by a short table of contents outlining the topics of the current installment.  I also add these topics to the subject line, which serves to promote more email opens.  A recent subject line:  “The Morning Brew, Vol. 2: Traffic Stats, Worst Practices, & Search Engine Wars.
• I post the newsletter archives for everyone to see on the CasJam Media website, right next to the sign-up form.  This makes it easy to refer to later with links and social media promotion.
• Every word and detail is tested and scrutinized before sending the live email.  It’s got to be polished and professional because that is how I want my business to be represented.

The results?

It might be a bit too early to tell, but I think the impact is meaningful and positive.

I’ve been receiving more referrals from current and past clients lately, and that was exactly my goal.  By staying in touch once a month, my newsletter keeps me in the minds of my network (without being overly intrusive).  This makes them more likely to think of me when a friend mentions they’re looking for a web designer.

It also highlights my versatility and new ways I can help my clients, often things they wouldn’t have thought to ask me about.  For example, during the design process for an retail website, my client and I mostly discussed things like E-Commerce solutions, shipping modules, and credit card processing.  But after reading my newsletter they were introduced to Twitter and found I could be a valuable social media consultant for their business.

Tracking success

As a service oriented business, it’s hard to accurately quantify the return on investment from my email marketing.  As described above, the benefits come in the form of referrals and repeat business, often weeks or months after the newsletter is sent.

That’s why I spend very little (or no) time reading through the tracking stats offered by my email marketing service (iContact.com).  I like to see how many emails were opened and forwarded, but I don’t tie it to any fancy analytics or action tracking.

Over to you

How do you approach email marketing for your business?  Any suggestions you’d like to share for increasing the effectiveness of your email newsletter?