How to Create an Impactful Email Newsletter Format

Why is your email newsletter format important?

You might be wondering why your email newsletter format is so important in the first place. From keeping your audience active to driving sales, there are plenty of benefits to having a good newsletter format.

Here are some of the most notable reasons you should focus on your newsletter format for emails:

Maintain an active audience & drive sales

First and foremost, a good newsletter helps you maintain an active audience and drive sales. If you’re delivering a content-filled newsletter on a regular basis, your audience is more likely to read that newsletter and keep up with what’s going on with your brand. When you write a quality newsletter, you keep your brand in the minds of readers and increase the odds of them purchasing any new products or services you’re offering.

Improve your ROI

You want to get the most out of your email marketing campaign, and finding a good newsletter format for emails can help with that. Your newsletter can help you increase sales and keep your audience engaged, which can mean a notable boost to your bottom line. If your newsletters aren’t performing as well as you’d hoped they would, you might need to work on your newsletter format.

Reduce unsubscribes

After a while, readers may lose interest in your newsletter if you’re not providing valuable information that’s easy to digest. Keeping customers engaged and subscribed to your newsletter is a good way to maintain consistent sales and an active audience. And, people are significantly less likely to unsubscribe if your newsletter is good. You might even consider using an email content optimizer to improve your email newsletter format.

Elements needed for the best email format for newsletters

Finding better ways to format your email newsletter is important, so you need to make sure you’re including all the right elements. Here are some of the things you need to include to optimize your email newsletter format:

Branded header

You want people to recognize your brand and know who they’re getting a newsletter from, so start with a branded header. You can include your company name and logo and use your brand’s colors to make your header instantly recognizable. The customers who like receiving these email newsletters will look forward to emails with your branding and be more likely to read through.

Attention-grabbing headline

The subject line and headline you choose for your newsletter are both important. The goal is to catch readers’ attention early on, that way they’re interested in reading the rest of your newsletter. A good way to do this is to tell readers about how something benefits them, such as the new product you’re unveiling or the work you’re doing behind the scenes.

Easy-to-read layout

Readability is important, so don’t go too crazy with your layout. Try to split things up a bit so that blocks of text are split into paragraphs and broken up by helpful graphics. Splitting paragraphs up allows readers to more easily digest the information in your newsletter.

You can use A/B testing to try out different layouts and see what people are responding to the best.

Scannable content

Speaking of making things easy to read, it’s important to make your content as scannable as possible. As we mentioned above you should break up content, but you can also use lists and subheaders to allow readers to scan the email quickly. You can also use bolded or colored font to highlight the most important parts of your newsletter for readers.

Eye-catching graphics

You might think newsletters are all about the words you choose, but eye-catching graphics play an important role in perfecting your email newsletter format. Graphics are a great way to simplify information about new products and services for readers and you can use charts and graphs to break down numerical data.

Clear call to action

A good newsletter should end with a call to action (CTA) that tells readers what they can do about the information they learned in the newsletter. You can let readers know where they can go to buy your new product or how they can contact you. You should make your CTA short, explicit, and linkable so that readers can take action immediately.

How to format an email newsletter

Learning how to format your emails is a difficult part of email marketing, but finding the right format is crucial. Here are some tips that can help you learn how to format an email newsletter to maximize audience engagement and drive sales.

Choose an email marketing provider

You should start by choosing an email marketing provider. The provider you choose determines the tools you’ll have at your disposal for automation, email optimization, and dynamic content. Look for a popular email marketing provider that offers all the features you need. If you can start with a free trial to see if a provider is right for you, that’s even better.

Select a template that works for your needs

The next thing you’ll need to do is select a template that works for what you’re trying to accomplish. Mailchimp has tons of email design templates that can help you write a better email newsletter. Look for a template that’s responsive and fits your brand, even if you have to make some changes to perfect it.

Customize your layout

Once you’ve found a template you like, you can customize it to make it your own. You don’t want to get too extravagant with customization, especially if you’re writing a short newsletter. At the same time, you don’t want your e-newsletter to look exactly like every other template, especially if your competitors are doing something similar. Customizing your template can give your newsletter a personal touch that reflects your brand.

You may also want to implement dynamic content for your email newsletters to that they’re personalized to each subscriber.

Add your header

The top of your newsletter should include a header that helps readers identify your brand. You can get creative with your header, but as we mentioned, you should include your company name and logo, as well as any colors your brand typically uses. You can also include contact information, a link to your website, or anything else you think is important.

Add body copy

The body copy is the real meat of your newsletter; this is where you include all the important news readers need to know. Whether you’re rebranding, developing a new product, or launching a new service, your body copy should go into more detail about the subject of your newsletter. Make sure you break this copy up with headings and graphics.

Note that the body copy may address several pieces of news. If that’s the case, make sure each topic is sectioned off so the information presented is clear to readers.

Add images

Images are a great way to display to make your emails more engaging. Plus, they can be used to present easy-to-read information in your newsletter, so don’t be afraid to use them. You can use charts, graphs, and other types of graphics to illustrate your point with fewer words, which makes your newsletter easy on the eyes and saves readers time.

Add footer & social links

At the very end of your newsletter, you should include a detailed footer. In your footer, make sure you provide readers with an email signature that includes:

• Basic contact information
• Links to your social media accounts
• An unsubscribe button with a link

You can implement your company logo and colors into your footer to make it match your header, but the footer is typically smaller.

When it comes to formatting an email newsletter, there’s no single layout you have to use. Combining the components above in a way that best caters to your customers is a good start.

What are the benefits of using Mailchimp?

If you want to maximize your ROI with email marketing, you need to choose the right email marketing provider. With Mailchimp, you get access to a variety of email newsletter templates, automation tools, and resources to help you learn more about email marketing. A/B testing can help you test various formats with different portions of your audience while analytics help you monitor how well your newsletters are doing. Mailchimp is essentially your all-in-one solution to email marketing, whether you want to write better emails or automate email marketing processes.

Get the most out of your newsletter

A good email newsletter can take your email marketing efforts to the next level, especially if you’ve got a decent subscriber list already. Take some time to work on your email newsletter format until you find something you like, then test your new format to see how readers respond to it. Ultimately, you want to find a format your readers enjoy, that way they keep coming back to your newsletter.

Ready to maximize your email marketing ROI? Try Mailchimp to see how it can help revitalize your email marketing campaign today.