3 steps to creating effective email newsletters

Email newslet­ters are like car alarms. When they first came out they were new and drew atten­tion because they broke through the exist­ing noise. Today every­one has one and they barely jus­tify turn­ing your head when you notice one.

Using a fan­tas­tic exam­ple from Esquire mag­a­zine, here are three steps to make your email newslet­ter stand out like a car alarm that plays, “La Cucaracha”:

1. Entice visu­ally
The Esquire exam­ple sim­u­lates a letter on a desk. An expen­sive roller­ball on the side gives it depth. The “I” in Esquire is dotted with ink. The font chosen for the date and “on sale now” is from an old school type­writer. All these help pull together a feel­ing that this is not an elec­tronic newslet­ter. It appears to be from an exec­u­tive. It’s for you per­son­ally. It’s genius. Notice also the large photos and very min­i­mal text, which brings up the next point.

2. Say very little
Esquire is not trying to cram unpalat­able amounts of infor­ma­tion into a single page. They chose 5 key arti­cles from this month’s issue to high­light, pro­vide a lead in sen­tence, and the link to read more. That’s it. The biggest prob­lem I see with email newslet­ters is saying too much. It instantly over­whelms the reader and they glaze over, or worse, hit delete. Think about your inbox. Which emails do you read first, the 5 para­graph ones or the 2 sen­tence one saying there’s cake in the break room? Exactly. The key here is to gen­er­ate inter­est and then lead them to a site or blog where they can get the full user experience.

3. Have a clear call to action
Whether it’s to visit the web­site for more infor­ma­tion, make a pur­chase, or spread the word, make it absolutely clear what to do next. Esquire does a great job by sep­a­rat­ing the arti­cle links from the copy and a big “Forward to a Friend” button at the bottom.

If you’d like to inter­act with the newslet­ter, it can be found here.