Email newsletters can be powerful marketing tools. However, there are a whole lot of ways that you can make them less useful. So many. I don’t mean to intimidate you but newsletters are one of the tools that we see used in the ways that are the least useful.

The issue is that business owners send these newsletters thinking only of themselves and the outcome they want from the newsletter. It’s important to see things from your customer’s perspective. Make sure that you’re offering them something that’s worthwhile and will catch their attention, not just trying to increase your own bottom line.

3 Email Newsletter Don’ts

1. Don’t Send Sporadically Over the holidays, I got a whole bunch of newsletters from companies I hadn’t heard from in awhile. For more than a few, I honestly couldn’t remember when or why I’d visited their website or how they had my email. Newsletter campaigns are designed for getting people’s attention and building trust. Ghosting on them until you want something is not going to get you what you want.
2. Don’t Send Too Often So instead you decide you should send multiple newsletters a week. You’ve got lots of great products!! This can backfire too. If you’re constantly talking about how great everything is, it starts to seem unbelievable. People stop paying attention and that is the opposite of what you want.
3. Don’t Make Dry, Repetitive Sales Pitches So you wrote some really great newsletter copy. It explains exactly what you want the clients to do. But they don’t do it. So you send it, with absolutely no edits, once a month like clockwork. Let me be clear: no one is reading your newsletter. For a newsletter to gain traction and build trust, it needs to provide value to the client. 

At the end of the day, newsletters are kind of like dating. You have to think about more than just what you want. You have to think about what the client wants and how you can show them you have value and are trustworthy. Once the client sees how great you are, it’s just the start of a beautiful relationship.