What makes a great newsletter?

Have you noticed that more and more founders and businesses have started a newsletter?

This is a good thing. For years, marketers have been saying that relying solely on social media to reach customers is a dangerous game when you don’t own the data or the content. With a newsletter, you’re landing in your customers’ inboxes on a regular basis, and you own the process.

According to Hubspot, 33% of marketers send weekly emails, 26% send emails multiple times per month and email marketing revenue is estimated to reach almost $11b by the end of 2023. Substack doubled their subscriber numbers in 2021. It’s no wonder that everyone wants a piece of the action.

This amount of growth means that your newsletter has to be good. It needs to earn its place in your readers' inbox and become something they look forward to reading.

We started our weekly newsletter Power Up In Brief in January and it’s developed into such a great marketing channel for us. We’ve already written an email marketing 101, so if you’re starting from scratch, then begin by reading this. And if you’re further down the line and you want to take your newsletter from good to great, here’s our advice:

? Know your audience

Before you start, consider the topics you want to cover, how you want to cover them, and (most importantly) what will resonate with your audience. For example, our audience includes early-stage startup founders, so we write about marketing tips to start a business. One of our favourite newsletters, Ahrefs, is all about SEO for marketers which is exactly their target audience.

When we think of newsletters, we think email, but this has changed. You can send newsletters through LinkedIn, Substack, Medium and even Shopify (for e-commerece brands). Choose a platform where your audience hangs out, and test your newsletter there.

You can’t be everything to all people, so don’t be disheartened when you get a flurry of unsubscribes. It’s much better to have a small, engaged list than 1000s of people who don’t open your emails. You’ll know if your newsletter is working if open and click rates are good and growing, even better - if readers reply and comment, this is a great sign of engagement.

? Share, don’t sell

So you have the attention of your audience, what next? Remember that a list of promotions is not something that they will look forward to reading.

We love how James Clear’s newsletter is so clear with its purpose and we love his advice about creating habits. Why? Because it adds value. Think about how you can do this, for example: What value are your audience looking for? What are they missing?

Your direct selling can be added as a PS or woven into your story. We will soon be launching our self-directed course. We will be sharing our process of how we put this together and what we learned, and you’ll see this mentioned on the PS at the bottom of Power Up In Brief.

? Be consistent

Before you announce a weekly newsletter, think carefully - can you commit to this every week? At the Scale Up Collective, we evolved from an occasional newsletter, to monthly and now weekly, and also branched out to LinkedIn. For your newsletter to become something that your audience looks forward to reading, they have to know what to expect. We look forward to opening Harry’s Marketing Examples every Monday, because it’s consistent.

So whether your newsletter is quarterly, monthly or weekly, do make sure you are showing up for your audience and adding value.

Do you have a favourite newsletter I should be reading? Let me know!