What Patients Want to See in Your Email Newsletter
Congrats! You have new subscribers in your email contact list. So, what’s next? Now that they have trusted you with their email address and have signed up to receive more information, you want to deliver relatable, timely, and resourceful information in a well-designed layout.
Content
A newsletter should be crafted as a conversation with your audience. There is no one-size-fits-all type of newsletter. A lot of variables affect the drafting of a newsletter template; some of these are audience, industry, time, and intended goal.
You want to be able to provide the right information for your audience, not just anybody.
You want to provide information that correlates with your business, not any business.
You want to publish information that’s timely and relatable, maybe even about trending topics of interest to your audience or timely seasonal information.
Lastly, you want to hit your intended goal!
Let’s dig a little deeper into your intended goal. What do you want to talk about with your audience? Do you want to inform them of an event or promotion coming up soon? Do you want to provide a resource for their use? Do you want to make them laugh? Do you want to inform with no action attached?
All these questions are important to ask before you craft your newsletter as your goal can change from time to time. There is nothing wrong with keeping your newsletter’s sections consistent from month to month, but the content needs to adapt to the new goal every time, and if that means you need to reformat your newsletter, that’s OK!
Layout and visuals should always support your message, and that’s why we need to know the intended goal first—to make sure you craft the appropriate visuals to evoke the right emotions or actions.
Design
Once we know the goal, we will know what on-brand visuals we need to pull for your newsletter design. Some general design items that users want to see more of are:
Images to support and balance your content. Not only do we want to catch the viewer’s attention with images, but we also don’t want to bore them with reading too much text.
Videos or Podcasts that will replace written content. To add to the above statement, provide more viewing and listening than reading.
GIFs to explain complicated processes, or, when applicable, just for fun.
Memes when trying to create a light and fun atmosphere, like birthdays.
Buttons that are easy to view and click in mobile and desktop views. This will allow for better user experience (UX) and provide a clear path to the desired information/pages.
Downloadable items for complex or long processes. Downloadable items work best when the information requires more attention and can be viewed later or when they can be an evergreen resource.
Simple and uncluttered design with a purpose (avoid multiple column layouts that can reflect an ad-like filled newsletter.)
Litmus, the well-known email marketing software, tells us that 95 percent of high-performing emails used 200 words per image or less, which means you always need a comfortable text-image balance. This is why we also recommend using videos, podcasts, or downloadable items to break up the text and engage the user.
They also tell us that 48 percent of high-performing emails used a one-column template, which means simple and uncluttered design is key in the performance of your newsletter.
Functionality
Lastly but most importantly, when you deliver a newsletter you want to make sure it’s accessible through all devices, providing a better UX and increasing your chances for competitive viewing and click-thru rates. Your newsletter needs to be mobile-friendly, which means the images and text size should resize and stack nicely when opened in different screen sizes (phones, tablets, desktops), browsers (Google Chrome, Safari, Explorer,) or email platforms (Outlook, Gmail, YahooMail.)
To guarantee functionality, we make sure to test newsletters before they go live, and we pride ourselves in providing different, flexible templates that will present the right information, hit your intended goal, and maintain your customers’ trust.
Creative8 Agency knows all about email marketing. Ready to boost your email engagement? Call us today at 713-322-6481 for a FREE audit of your email newsletter process and other digital marketing initiatives.
