How to Make Your Blog’s Newsletter A Success Every Time

You’ve got a great thing going with your newsletter. But are you tracking to see what works best? That’s where the email marketing jargon of Open Rate and Click-Through Rate comes into play.

• Open Rate: The number of people who opened your email divided by the total size of the email list
• Click-Through Rate: The number of people who clicked on your call to action divided by the total number of people who opened the email

To get an idea of what a healthy Open Rate or Click-Through Rate is for you, view this chart of industry standards for email marketing.

The Most Valuable Email Marketing Tool

Whenever you see a particularly good or bad email metric, go back into your newsletter and find out what may have caused it, and keep that bit of knowledge saved in a notes field or worksheet along with your insights, under a good or bad column. After a few newsletters go out, your document should be full of useful notes.[left]

Good

• Subject lines with emojis seem to be opened more
• If I put someone’s name next to the call to action more people click the link
• Lots of people seem to read emails on Thursday night

Bad

• If I have more than 3 sentences together fewer people click through
• Subject lines with the word free in it actually don’t work as well
• People don’t seem to read emails on Sunday morning

By the end of a year, you’ll have the most valuable tool you could ever dream of. A personal cheat sheet of the best ways to write emails for your target audience. Just mix and match down the Good column and write your email.

If you want to learn more about the best ways to get people to open your emails, grab the guidebook below to learn the 4 simple tactics that will guarantee someone to open your email.

Running Tests

If you’re looking to go pro with newsletters, consider running tests. Depending on the email marketing platform you’re using, they might have testing built in, usually called A/B Testing.

A/B testing is when you pick two different content pieces and send them out to a portion of your group. Whichever content piece is most successful will then be sent on to the rest of your group.

What Is A/B Testing?

For example, let’s say you A/B test your subject line.

A: Free Printable! Download Now
B: Check out this super-cute present I made for you

A portion ( typically between 20%-50%) of your newsletter list will get either the first subject line or the second subject line. And for a few hours, the platform monitors the Open Rate of both sets of emails. Then it will declare a winner based on Open Rates, and will send the winning email subject line to the rest of your list.

Pretty cool, huh?

What if Your Email Provider Doesn’t Have A/B Testing?

But not every provider does this. For example, the up-and-coming email marketing darling Convertkit does not offer A/B testing. So what should you do?

Do the testing yourself, of course! If you have a large list, divide it up into 20/20/60. The two 20% sections will get A or B of your email. Wait 4 hours and come back to see the Open Rate or Click Rate. Pick your winner. Then send the winner to the remaining 60% of your group.

And remember, write down what you learned in your newsletter note keeping document!

Don’t Forget: Write Down the Good and the Bad!

It can be easy over time to skip it, but trust me, this is the most valuable piece of information you have.

If you already have sent newsletters to your readers, go back into your history and fill in the good and bad columns for each of your past emails. Then when you’re ready to send out your next newsletter, you’ll already have great insights on how to write it and send it.