Running an association is a complex but fulfilling job. Your task is to keep your members informed, interested, and active. There are numerous strategies you can use to accomplish this goal. Sending regular email newsletters is one of the best techniques and an evergreen digital marketing trend.
A newsletter is only effective if you know how to write it. Nailing a newsletter means investing the time and effort necessary for planning it and carrying it out. If you’re curious to learn what it takes to write a newsletter your members will actually read, we’ve got you covered. Here are 7 essential tips on how to write a killer newsletter for your association members.
Let’s break it down together.
1. Have a Clear Goal
Sending a newsletter needs to be done for a purpose.
You shouldn’t send these emails just to send something to your members. This will make them angry and they’ll most likely unsubscribe.
Instead, make sure that each email that you send has a clear goal. The goals can vary:
- information about an event
- offering premium membership
- inviting them to take part in a webinar
- inviting them to follow you on social media
- inviting them to volunteer
Whatever your goal is, make sure the newsletter is strictly focused on it.
If you make it too general or unclear, no one will waste their time reading it.
2. Make Them Open it
One of the major challenges you’ll be facing is to get your members to open your email.
People receive tons of emails every day. Some of it matters and some of it is spam mail. The important thing is, you need to convince them your newsletter is worth opening.
And you’ve only got one shot.
That means that you have to invest in the following:
- the “from” line
- the subject line
These two segments of your newsletter will either make or break your attempt to have them open your email. The best way to handle it is the following:
- use your full name in the “from” line
- make the subject line brief but intriguing
- tell them what’s waiting for them inside the email
- create a sense of urgency to have them open the email immediately
- make it personal by using their name
Invest the effort into mastering the art of writing effective subject lines. You can even test different versions to see which converts better.
Once you know what your audience prefers, stick to it and work on further improvement.
3. Opening Line
The opening line is the final chance for you to win your members over and have them open, and read your newsletter.
Once them email appears in their inbox, they’ll be able to see the opening line before even opening the email.
The opening line has to be:
- attention-grabbing
- direct
You can make it in the form of a question to create additional suspense.
4. Keep it Short
Once you have your members open the newsletter, you need to ensure they go ahead and read it. Here’s what’s certainly going to make them close the email before they even start reading:
- a huge amount of text
- lengthy paragraphs
- lack of structure to help them scan the content
If you want them to read the newsletter, you need to make it easy for them to go through it. Here’s what you should do:
- keep it short
- use short paragraphs
- use subheadings to break it down
- use bullet points and numbering
Also, you need to use bold and italics to emphasize the most important parts of the newsletter.
That way, your members won’t have to read every single word and they’ll be more willing to invest the time necessary for understanding what the article is about.
5. Use Visuals
People love seeing visually appealing content online. It’s a fact.
If your newsletter is nothing but a bunch of black and white letters, chances are you’re not going very far with it.
But, if you throw in some colors and visuals, you’ll increase your chances of having people reading the newsletter.
With that in mind, we suggest that you:
- add images
- add infographics
- use fonts that are easy to read
- create a beautiful design
You can use a graphic design tool such as Canva to make a stunning newsletter that your members will enjoy reading.
The design should be simple, to avoid confusing the readers with too much going on on their screens.
6. Use a Call-to-Action
CTAs can make a huge difference for your newsletter.
If you want to add that final touch to the content of the newsletter and try sealing the deal with your members, you need a CTA. Using it will help you:
- get to the point of your newsletter
- get your members to engage
- help you point out the goal of the email
- help your readers decide what to do fast
Make sure you use the right CTA button design to make it clearly visible and emphasized. It should dominate the visual aspect of the newsletter and be among the first things your members notice.
7. Keep Your Target Audience in Mind
Finally, there’s one last thing that you need to consider when writing a newsletter.
Will your target audience be interested in reading it?
You’re writing it with a specific set of people in mind. That means that the content of the newsletter needs to be:
- valuable to your target audience
- informative
- providing answers tot eh questions they might be asking
- giving them guidance
To put it simply, if the content of your newsletter isn’t interesting to your target audience, they won’t read it. They’ll just send it to the trash bin or ignore it altogether.
That’s why you need to think about the needs of your target audience and craft the newsletter accordingly.
Final Thoughts
To make sure your members actually read the newsletter you send, you have to think it through. The newsletter needs to be sent to the right people and contain the information they’ll want to read about.
Use the advice provided above to start writing a better and more effective newsletter. Make sure you follow these tips and you’ll have more members reading the emails your association sends.
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Kristin Savage nourishes, sparks and empowers using the magic of a word. She is a blogger and a freelance writer whose passion is helping people reach their goals using communication skills, and strategic planning. She works as an editor at Wow Grade and Supreme Dissertations. She’s also a writer at Writing Judge.