Making the Most out of B2B Newsletters

Newsletters are one of the best ways to stay top-of-mind of your target audience. Many B2B companies use it to educate their audience and promote products and solutions. But how do you ensure your newsletter content is attractive to your audience? Where should you start if you don't already have an audience to send newsletters to? What are the different ways in which you can grow a newsletter?

In this edition of the Elevate Your Marketing newsletter, I attempt to answer these questions. This is based on my experience running newsletters for Skalegrow 's clients and the knowledge I have accumulated over the years. So, whether you are an experienced B2B marketer or someone getting started, there will be a ton of value for you in this. Read till the end to ensure you don't miss the key points.

The hard truth about newsletters

When we think of newsletters, popular names like The Hustle and Morning Brew come to our minds. To me, these are outliers. A vast majority of newsletters don't get enough readership. This can be also be attributed to:

• Increasing digital noise. Because of this, cutting through the clutter has become very challenging.
• Churning out high-quality content in every edition is not as easy as it looks.
• Content has become a commodity, especially in the B2B world. Those who stand out are probably only the top 0.1% or so.
• If you don't have an audience that is familiar with your business or content, building one from scratch can be a herculean task.

But I find an even more important criterion that readers look for in a newsletter - novelty. Subscribers expect every single edition to offer something that they don't know or haven't read about. Some also look for an 'experience' that puts either their left or right brain to work.

With all these challenges, winning with an email newsletter is not easy. You will have to use all your 'marketing weapons' to build a newsletter that your audience loves.

But most often, the techniques you need to apply are not complex. It's more about implementing them consistently over an extended period of time than applying a magical formula.

With these in mind, let us get started.

Getting the fundamentals out of the way

Before we get into some tips to improve the reach and popularity of your newsletter, let us go through some of the basics of running one. They include:

1. A newsletter platform/email automation tool: For this, you can use an email/marketing automation tool like HubSpot or Zoho Campaign. Another choice is to use platforms like Substack or Beehiiv which come with many native features that make it easy to get started. You can also consider using LinkedIn for distributing your newsletter. This works well if your personal profile or company page has a large number of followers.
2. An email list: Your existing list of customers or prospects is a great place to start. You can also try sending it to a cold email list taken from an Apollo or Lusha. However, I wouldn't recommend doing this unless your email domain is warmed up enough. The best way to go about this is to start with an audience that is familiar with you and grow your subscriber base using the techniques discussed later in this article.
3. Frequency of sending: Whether your newsletters are educational or entertaining in nature, there is a thin line between being too lean and information overload. Choose a frequency that engages your audience enough but at the same time doesn't bore them. I would recommend a minimum of once a fortnight but not more than once a week. You can make exceptions when special events occur (a funding round for example).
4. Time of sending: If you have a diverse list with people across different time zones, it is a good idea to segment the list based on the region and send the newsletter during active working hours. Experiment with different times and go with one that attracts the highest engagement.

Making your B2B newsletter stand out - key tactics and techniques

Your audience always seeks something of value from your newsletter. That's the point from which you should look at it. Given this, below are a few tactics to make it more interesting so that your readers want to engage with it again and again.

1. Have at least 1 element of novelty in every edition
2. Keep the content an even mix
3. Make the readers curious
4. Invite your readers' participation
5. Include contests and celebrate champions

Let us look at each of these in detail

1. The element of novelty

Why do you think Mr Beast has been so successful with his YouTube channel? One of the key reasons is the variety of the content. Every video is different. In one video he blasts a train, and in another, he talks about yachts. There is always an element of novelty in his videos.

This works for any type of content, especially newsletters. Consider this very newsletter for example. Whenever I have written about a topic that has been discussed a million times by others, the views have gone down. So, every edition of the Elevate Your Marketing newslette r meets one of the following criteria:

1. The topic itself is relatively new and not discussed so often in the B2B marketing world. Talking about the latest trends is a great example.
2. The topic is old but I add a completely new perspective over and above the popular views
3. The content focuses on a process, framework, or template that brings down the time of achieving something for B2B marketers.

In essence, novelty has a huge role in the number of views of the newsletter. While an average topic in the Elevate Your Marketing newsletter gets around 500 views, a topic with novelty gets anywhere from 600 to 900 views.

2. 'Balancing' the content

When it comes to newsletters, some tend to promote their products or services a little too much while a few others focus only on education. What you need instead is to meet somewhere in the middle. Promote your solutions in a way that doesn't bore your audience. Also make sure to educate or entertain the readers without making it look like too much info.

There is nothing like a magical proportion between the two that works the best for every industry. A good place to start would be to divide the newsletter into different sections where readers know what to expect from each. For example, some of the sections in your newsletter can be:

• Product spotlight: Briefly talk about a key product
• Thought leadership: Link to whitepapers, ebooks, blog posts, etc., that are valuable to your readers
• Customer speak: Testimonials or case studies from customers
• Webinars: Upcoming and recently concluded webinars
• Event highlights: Upcoming and recent event participation details
• Awards and recognition: Any recent industry awards your business or employees won

To give your solutions or products the maximum attention, you can add them at the top.

One thing to note is that your newsletter can have a different format altogether. For example, The Skalegrow Newsletter shares 1 B2B growth hack every week. We don't have different sections or subsections. The focus is to talk about a single hack throughout. Similarly, come up with a format or structure that you think will be the most interesting for your target audience.

3. Making your readers curious

Content items like a newsletter that are published based on a routine can benefit from making the readers curious. Here are a few ways to do that:

• A great email subject line
• Having an interactive element or activity (say a quiz like The B2B Marketing Wizard Quiz ) in every edition.
• Feature a story or campaign. This will make the audience want to open the newsletter in hope of reading an exciting story or example.
• A giveaway with every edition. This will require you to invest some dollars (or time) but can attract a lot of engagement from your readers.

4. Encourage readers' participation

I believe that one of the biggest drawbacks of a newsletter is that it is a one-way communication. It doesn't have the voice of your customer. You can change this by inviting contributions from your readers. It can be by asking them to contribute to the entire content of an edition or sharing an opinion that is relevant to the topic.

This also invokes curiosity among your readers since they would be eager to know if someone got featured in an edition, which in turn can lead to increased open rates and engagement.

5. Contests and challenges

We spoke about quizzes to invoke curiosity. Contests and challenges are another great way to do that. The kind of contests and challenges you can run will depend on the nature of your business and the audience.

For example, if I were to run a contest for Skalegrow's target audience (which is B2B marketers), here are a few options I would think of:

• Creating a positioning statement for a SaaS product with inputs like product features, target audience, region focus, etc. The best positioning statement with the right justification can be declared the winner.
• Creating a landing page (including the copy) using a free landing page builder for an IT solutions provider.
• Repurposing a blog post into a LinkedIn carousel post by writing the copy and designing the carousel.

I mean, the options are plenty. To make sure the contest is useful for your readers, consider running a poll before creating it. To make things more interesting, announce - and celebrate - the winners and champions of every contest.

7 tips to grow your newsletter

This is a bit tricky. With so many newsletters out there, growing your subscriber list is not going to be easy. But here are a few tips based on my own experience and opinions from other marketing experts.

1. Lead magnets: This is by far the most common method used to get newsletter subscribers. Ebooks, whitepapers, templates, and checklists, all of them work well. You can also use an exit intent popup tool like OptinMonster to attract more signups.
2. Package your newsletter with other benefits: Exclusive giveaways and access to events are examples of other benefits you can offer as a part of your newsletter subscription. Another example is launching a newsletter as a part of a community. These techniques will encourage those who are looking for more than just knowledge to subscribe.
3. Social media: This goes without saying. Platforms like LinkedIn and X are great places to promote your B2B newsletter. Depending on your niche, Facebook can also work.
4. A referral program: Easily accessible benefits work best for referral programs. Examples include tickets to a concert or sports game, gift cards, discount coupons, free access to a tool, etc.
5. Influencer marketing: In most cases, influencer marketing won't be free. However, if you have a loyal set of readers, they can spread the word for you. To identify them, look at your newsletter metrics and find those who constantly engage with your content.
6. Events: This is not an easily scalable method. However, asking people you meet at relevant events to subscribe to your newsletter can get you a quality audience. But here's the catch. Most people wouldn't take the time to visit a link and fill in their details, So, you can simply ask them to tell you their email ID and you can write (or type) it down. Exchanging visiting cards also works well.
7. Ads: Ads are one of the fastest ways to grow a newsletter. If you have the budget, go for it.

Final words

There isn't a single right way of running a newsletter. The best ones keep experimenting and find the sweet spot for their audience. And quite often, the sweet spot changes. What worked today might not work a year later. Trends change. Tastes change. Your readers also grow intellectually with time and expect more from your content.

Because of this, publishing a newsletter that consistently retains your audience's attention is a long-term commitment. To keep their energy levels high, you need to constantly come up with elements of value. In addition to what we discussed in this article, think about what else you can do to make your newsletter more valuable to your ICP. List them down and discuss with your peers. Implement them in your newsletter and measure their impact. If you find them working, please don't forget to share that knowledge with others.

Newsletter as a service by Skalegrow

Skalegrow is a B2B marketing agency that helps companies in the IT, tech, SaaS, robotics, and embedded systems industries grow with marketing. One of the ways in which we help our customers is by building a loyal audience using newsletters. With the experience of running 5+ newsletters, we know what it takes to intrigue your readers. From using the right mix of content to implementing activities that attract engagement, our customers' newsletters have an average open rate of more than 35%.

To learn more about how we can help build a newsletter that your ideal customers will love, write to us at [email protected] .

More learning resources

Skalegrow has a blog that has more than 60 articles on various topics in B2B marketing. We discuss content, ABM, demand gen, martech, LinkedIn marketing, and much more there. Check it out here .

Also don't forget to subscribe to Skalegrow's newsletter where we share 1 B2B growth hack every week. In addition, we publish useful content on our YouTube channel. Check it out here .