5 ways to make your E-Newsletters more effective
Having monitored the open rates and analysed the effectiveness of millions of emails, we now have some solid data and helpful hints to provide you with in the hope that you will eliminate all actions that assist in your e-newsletter and promotions ending in the recycle bin.
There are a number of DO NOT DOs, but that is a whole different article altogether.
Here are 5 methods you can employ to gauge your patrons’ interests and have them look forward to your emails rather than think of them as trash.
- HOW-TO
How-to Content is instructional, and teaches your patrons how to do something specific. This content will usually end up being your most read and your most linked-to posts or pages.
From cocktails, to recipes, to track mixing and mashups for those in the club scene. Use your creativity and come up with a a few topics on what advice and tips you could for free to your patrons.
Remember, Google doesn’t make a cent when you search for something, but they still make money from all their happy users by what is considered a free service. Granted this is from a whole different advertising model, but nonetheless, free is good.
Offer information for free, so that you can make money off your events, nights, cooking classes, cd launches, fashion shows etc.
- REVIEWS
Product reviews are the first thing that come to mind, but you can publish a review on practically anything: popular websites in your niche, new liqueurs, new recipes, new acts, news stories in the mainstream media channels, discussion forums, magazines, meet-ups – basically anything of interest to your readers that you can write an opinion about.
Writing these reviews and talking about how you are or plan to use these products or services in your venue is a great way of building anticipation in your patrons to some interesting things that they can sample in the near future.
- LISTS
Lists are very popular and make for very easy content. You can create a list and just write a short description in a sentence or two for each.
Lists are fun & easy to write.
Some examples that you could offer your patrons:
- Top 10 cocktails of all time
- 15 low fat but delicious meals you can enjoy at [venue name]
- 5 reasons why having your birthday at [venue name] will make it the best night of the year
Tip: Try adding the word “best” or “top” to your title as well as a number to indicate to the reader that it will be a dot point summary of information and thereby making it easier and more enjoyable to read
- INTERVIEWS
Interviews make for great easy web content. You can start with just 3-10 questions, and the person you interview basically creates the rest of the content for you. They’ll be willing to do this for the exposure to your readership, and for the relevant backlink to their website.
Interview someone that is relevant to your line of business and that your readers may know. If this is out of reach, then make the content of the interview something inspiring to your readers. They will love to know how someone created, designed or thought of something and will love reading about it if you can strike a proverbial chord with them.
- SUM UP WITH SPECIAL OFFER
This last chunk can be a call to action for your reader. If you tantalised their taste buds with some delicious food and drinks, or got them interested enough to know more about you, you can now ask them to have their next night outwith you and have a “click here” to book a table or “create a guestlist” link in the email. Better yet, you could give them the option of doing it, right from within the email as indicated in the image below with the aid of the “One-Click-Guestlist” feature in MyGuestlist.
This is an example of a personalised birthday email with a direct call to action for a guestlist right from within the email.
From our investigations, the above formula seems to be quite effective at keeping a loyal base of patrons which eventually turn into customers who have grown to love your brand and what you offer, enough to have their next birthday or function with you.
The only other piece of advice that goes hand-in-hand with all the above and probably the most important of them all is to make sure that you keep these informative and useful e-newsletters recurring. Whether it’s weekly, fortnightly or otherwise, do not fall off the radar and let laziness kill your online campaigns.
If you have trouble looking for any good email templates, check out our next blog post or let us know and we’ll lend a helping hand to give you some free templates for you to choose from and even customise one to your liking.
