Recently a colleague mentioned that she had stopped sending out a regular newsletter because each one took such a long time to put together. When she sent out newsletters in the past, she got fantastic open rates.
I had a client who had a similar problem–the newsletter took so much time that she rarely sent one out.
[Tweet “Your newsletter shouldn’t be a big project!”]
Your newsletter shouldn’t be a big project!
This colleague had the idea the newsletter had to have unique content in it. Wrong (as she realized herself after a while). Yes, it’s nice to put an additional tip that’s just for subscribers in your newsletter, but you don’t have to.
Now, some emails should be for sales. They just try to get subscribers to click through to a sales page.
But a newsletter email can simply introduce your latest blog post. You just repeat the first part of the blog post, leave off with a cliff hanger, and give people a link to click through to the blog post. How easy is that? Your subscribers want to know about the new content you’ve written; all you have to do is tell them about it.
Yes, you can add a link to a related product. You can add a short personal note. You can add anything that you want. But this doesn’t have to take much time at all. Really, if you’re spending more than 1 hour on your newsletter, you’re doing it wrong.
Sometimes, you want to write a special email. Sometimes, you want to write an email with an affiliate link and you need to look that up. Even that shouldn’t take long. You should be smiling like the woman in the photo above, not scowling, when you do your newsletter.
Does your newsletter take you more than one hour? Tell me, what are you spending so much time on? Leave a comment!
4 replies to "Your newsletter should be quick and easy"
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It’s the combination of writing the blog post and the email that’s the big project for me.
I used to dread writing newsletters, but as you say in the article, it should not take that long. We always make it difficult on ourselves. Thanks for the article Ellen.
I understand, but your blog posts are central to getting organic traffic from your content — and also to providing your subscribers with regular, valuable content. So get into a routine of creating regular blog posts — they don’t have to a huge big deal — and the rest will follow.