An email newsletter is a great way to promote the awesome content you publish on your blog. According to a study from Radicati, a message is five times more likely to be seen in an email compared to Facebook. Not to mention, email is 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
However, coming up with fresh and engaging content to send subscribers day after day, week after week and year after year can be harder than you think.
Writer’s block happens to the best of us, but don’t get discouraged when you need some fresh ideas for your emails.
To help you plan your next newsletter and send content subscribers will love, read on to get four ideas you can start using today.
1. Repurpose your best legacy content
Writer’s block can strike at any moment. If you struggled with what to write on your blog, that could put you in a difficult position when it comes to crafting your email newsletter.
For times when you’re light on content, your oldie-but-goodie legacy blog posts should be your best friends.
Repurposing older, high-performing blog posts in your newsletter is a great way to source content, save time and drive new traffic to your best work. Consider using your evergreen content (the type that isn’t time-sensitive), such as how-to information and answers to frequently asked questions.
If there’s any recent industry news that your post could tie back to, even better. Add that fresh spin to your legacy content in your email newsletter to emphasize its timeliness and importance.
In a recent newsletter for our blog, we featured a post, “51 Open-Worthy Subject Line Ideas” that was written months ago – and it resulted in one of our highest performing emails ever!
By repurposing this blog post, we were able to breathe new life into it and double our average click-through rate.
2. Interview an industry thought leader
Are you ready to channel your inner journalist? Interviewing an expert in your field is a great way to entertain, educate and engage your readers, while adding a fresh perspective to your email newsletters.
Interviewing influencers can be intimidating, especially if you’ve never conducted an interview. But stepping out of your comfort zone and reaching out to an influencer in your field can do wonders for your credibility and readership, especially if your guest has a large audience.
There’s an art to conducting a stimulating, engaging interview. Learning to interview effectively may take some practice, but as long as you research your subject, plan your questions in advance and set up interviews ahead of time, your discussion should be an interesting, exciting addition to your blog’s email newsletter.
If you’re feeling particularly creative, try recording these interviews and turning them into videos or podcasts to link back to on your blog. Interviews make for great interactive content, allow you to reach new audiences and help drive engagement for your email newsletters.
3. Feature loyal readers and customers
Just as you can interview and feature high-profile “celebs” within your industry, try doing the same for your loyal readers.
In many cases, your readers might better relate to the success story of a person who doesn’t have as much klout as an influencer. Their success might feel more attainable, even if it’s not on the same scale as an influencer.
On our blog, we frequently share success stories from our customers after conducting in-person interviews. This is helpful because we get to meet and learn about all of the awesome things they’re doing with email marketing to support their businesses or projects. It also inspires our readers who hope to do the same.
After posting the customer story, we include it in our weekly blog newsletter, like this one featuring photographer Jared Polin:
Pro Tip: Include visuals to further entice your newsletter subscribers to click through to your post. Don’t have a fancy DSLR camera? Use the camera on your mobile phone to capture high-quality images. Then try one of these free design tools to edit your images to perfection.
Need a quicker way to feature customers? You might want to consider sharing user-generated content from your subscribers, such as social posts.
In Paleo Pete’s email newsletter, he shares Instagram images tagged by his readers and encourages them to keep it up:
4. Provide exclusive offers
Offering incentives to subscribe to your blog’s newsletter is a great way to build your audience, but it’s also an effective way to keep them happy after they’ve signed up.
Adding exclusive freebies, coupons or sneak-peeks into your next newsletter can help you promote a product, strengthen subscriber loyalty and drive traffic to your blog or website.
Putting the finishing touches on a new ebook? Offer it to your blog subscribers first in your newsletter – and let them know! Use this time to collect feedback and gauge interest in it before launching it into the wild. This way, you can delight your existing fans and make improvements to your ebook to increase the appeal and value to newcomers.
Or if you offer a paid product, consider sending the occasional “Thank You” discount or freebie to convert your readers into customers.
Send newsletters that knock your subscribers’ socks off
A well-written and designed email newsletter can help expand your blog’s audience and build relationships with readers. Writing a compelling email that connects with your audience may seem challenging at first, but with the ideas listed above, you should be able to create fresh, creative newsletters subscribers can’t wait to read.
For more ideas on what to write in your emails, sign up for our free email course, What to Write in Your Emails. As a special bonus, you’ll also get 30+ free email content templates!
