Business newsletters have been a cornerstone of marketing for years. No matter what other marketing trends come and go, emails are here to stay for a reason. Few other marketing channels can match their consistency and effectiveness, which is why every company should have one, including B2B companies. Read on to discover why business newsletters work, and what our top tips are for sending one.
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Why Business Newsletters Work
Emails may feel a little traditional compared to some newer marketing channels, such as TikTok. However, whether your company is B2B or B2C, emails are still one of the most effective marketing channels you can use. In fact, 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters, according to the Content Marketing Institute.
Emails are especially beneficial for B2B companies because their intended audience, usually employees, already spend hours attending to their email account during the workday. In 2021, workers spent 149 minutes a day, or 2.5 hours, checking their business email while they were at work, according to Adobe’s annual email use survey. This indicates that it may be easy for recipients to take a few minutes to read a relevant business newsletter.
This contrasts with other marketing channels, such as social media, which employees might only be able to check on their breaks — not to mention that some companies block access to these sites during work hours. Even if the employees do have access to these other marketing channels at work, most people don’t want to use their brief breaks or precious off hours to engage with work-related content if they can help it.
And those who actively subscribe to your email newsletter show they are at least somewhat interested in reading your content and hearing about your products or services. This makes them more likely to engage with your email newsletter as compared to other channels, where they have not actively subscribed to your content.
It’s clear the B2B newsletter will remain a mainstay of the marketing mix in the coming year. If you’re wondering how you can make the most of your business newsletter, read on to discover our top tips for creating and sending one.
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Newsletter Communication Strategy Tips
Determine the Purpose of Your Newsletter
Before you begin, you should determine the purpose of your B2B newsletter and figure out where it fits into your sales funnel. For most companies, business emails fall into the middle of the funnel.
The potential customer has already expressed awareness of and interest in your business by signing up for the email, but they’re not quite ready to buy yet. As you craft your newsletter content, stay focused on moving subscribers through the sales funnel, and write your copy with that in mind.
Choose a Visually Appealing Design With Clear CTAs
Copy isn’t the only important element. You should also choose a visually appealing design with clear calls to action (CTAs) that fit with your company branding. Also, ensure your newsletter is optimized for mobile and tablets, as well as desktop.
If you have the budget, you should also invest in email marketing software or an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage your business newsletter subscribers. A CRM will allow you to segment your customers into different groups, so you can target their interests more specifically.
Consider the Best Time and Frequency
When scheduling the newsletter, evaluate your analytics to figure out the most effective time to send your emails and optimize for that time. Don’t send on weekends or bank holidays, when your audience is very unlikely to be checking their work email. If you have international subscribers across many different time zones, keep in mind that you might need to send the email in different batches.
Moreover, you should send emails frequently, but not too frequently. If you send an email every day, customers might get annoyed and unsubscribe, but if you only send one once every few months, they might forget about you. Use A/B testing and frequently investigate your analytics, so you can continually improve your newsletter’s timing.
Evaluate Other B2B Newsletters
Finally, we recommend subscribing to some B2B newsletters and analyzing them critically to figure out what you do and don’t like. If you’re not sure where to start, we’ll offer some examples in the next section to help you get started.
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B2B Newsletter Examples
To give you an idea of how different approaches can work for different companies, we’ve rounded up four business newsletters that have leveraged different strategies to achieve success.
The Hustle
Founded in 2014 as a daily newsletter, The Hustle has now become a full-fledged media company with 1.5 million subscribers, a podcast, and a paid premium research community. The daily emails are short, taking five minutes or less to read, and written in a funny, engaging style.
The content features a roundup of various business and entrepreneur news stories from the previous day, such as product launches and acquisition announcements. They also include graphics and memes to make it more visually appealing and inject some humor into the newsletter.
Taco From Trello
This is a business newsletter sent by Trello, which is a web-based Kanban-style productivity application. The email is very short on copy but heavy on graphics and visuals to make it extremely quick to read.
The emails go out approximately twice a month, so subscribers aren’t overwhelmed by the frequency. The newsletter includes lots of productivity content that is not specifically about Trello, so they aren’t constantly pushing their products, and users are still getting value even if they don’t use Trello.
Examples of general productivity content include “How to Create A Realistic and Enjoyable Career Path for Your Team Members” and “5 Ways to Reinvigorate and Level-Up Your Home Office.” They also include Trello-specific content, such as “6 Delightful Trello Features to Try,” to help subscribers get more out of the application.
SparkToro
SparkToro is an audience research tool that launched in Spring 2020; it was co-founded by Rand Fishkin, who helped to found Moz. SparkToro started its monthly newsletter in Fall 2021. Each newsletter includes three audience research tips, as well as a roundup of news items and tweets from across the web.
This newsletter takes the opposite approach of Taco from Trello, including mostly text with no visual “filler.” You can also read past newsletters on the SparkToro website to see if you would like the content before you commit to subscribing.
Grammarly
Grammarly takes a unique approach to business newsletters. Each week this service sends out an Insights email, showing how much you used Grammarly and how your performance compares to past weeks, as well as other users on the site.
This feature fuels people’s competitive streak and encourages them to use the tool even more. The emails are visually appealing, including charts, graphs, and images for each metric. Grammarly also sends out the occasional email linking to their blog content, which is full of informative tips for communication, in addition to the statistical Insights email.
If you are looking to up your B2B newsletter game, we’ve got you covered with recommendations for email marketing platforms and CRM systems. If you need more personalized suggestions, please contact us, and we’ll connect you with one of our unbiased technology experts who will help you find the perfect platform for your business.
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