Newsletters — they’re a common component of a content marketing strategy but when you start Googling to find the best practices for your newsletter you might struggle to find results. I know… I’ve been trying to find sources for this article and I’ve come up dry. “What are the current newsletter best practices,” I’ve asked in a dozen different ways. Frankly, I’m not finding a whole lot that’s helpful. 

I decided we needed to write about newsletters when I started seeing a trend emerge where the newsletter is the content. The rise ofSubstack has certainly encouraged people to write epic newsletters with lots of insights right there on the page, never — or rarely — asking people to click through to an article. Is this the best practice for newsletters now? I don’t know — I can’t officially confirm my suspicions that newsletters are trending this way. But here is what I do know: Your newsletter — or any email marketing you send — needs to reflect your goals if it’s going to be opened, let alone engaged with. So let’s explore the options for optimizing your email newsletter strategy. 

Driving site traffic with a newsletter

For most of e-newsletter history, the main goal has been to establish a connection with your audience and drive traffic back to your website. Sure, you may have rounded up some industry news to help provide thought leadership and extra value, but your own content is front and center, leading off the newsletter and hopefully enticing readers to explore the content on your site. If this is your goal, then these new long-form newsletters with no links are not for you. Instead, you will want to employ a format that showcases and funnels readers to your content.

Establishing thought leadership through newsletters

If your goal is not to drive traffic, but to inform your readers, putting all of your content right in the newsletter may be your better option. In digital marketing, we’re often talking about the customer journey and click paths. Well, one way to ensure you are eliminating as many clicks as possible is to stick your content right in the body of the newsletter. I have a few reservations about this type of newsletter — it’s hard to track who is really reading the content when there are no clicks to trace, and when I see a long email in my inbox I almost immediately hit delete — but it’s clearly working for someone.

Creating conversions with a newsletter

In my experience, driving conversions with a newsletter is a hard sell — especially with the traditional kind. The fact is, newsletters should be informative and even your most engaged readers aren’t likely to be in the market for sales pitches. Whether you’re selling ads to monetize the newsletter or looking to drive your own conversions, there is a lot of competing content and users tend to engage with the informative articles, not the ads. Still, it’s worth a try. Designing your newsletter with at least one block for an ad will, at the very least, help build awareness so that when you send a more targeted email you’ve already established some trust.

The final word on email newsletters

Whatever you hope to achieve with your newsletter, keep one thing in mind: there is no better way to stay in touch with your readers than via email. On social media, you are at the whims of the algorithms, but email remains constant. Users often prefer to be contacted via email — and the more you build your relationship through useful content like newsletters, the more your users will trust you when it’s time to ask them to do more.