Absolutely Everything You Need to Know About Marketing a Newsletter

Thanks to the success of newsletters like the Hustle and theSkimm, newsletters are on the rise. Most marketers are adding newsletters to their B2C email marketing strategy because they establish a link between the brand and consumers that doesn’t rely on third-party data. And, of course, newsletters are effective for B2B companies as well.

In this article, we’ll cover the fundamentals you need to know to market your newsletter.

Email newsletters help your business in many ways. The biggest benefits of an engaging newsletter are that it:

Increases brand awareness. By providing valuable content that your subscribers look forward to opening, you’ll keep your brand top-of-mind with consumers.
Establishes credibility. Sending relevant content that demonstrates your expertise builds your credibility in the eyes of your subscribers.
Captures attention. Once your subscribers are in the habit of opening your emails, you can begin to direct their attention to special offers and other content that will drive revenue.

But before you can realize those benefits, you’ll need to get your newsletter off the ground. That means getting subscribers.

How to Get More Subscribers

You have a lot of options at your disposal when marketing a newsletter. You can use social media, ads, your website, or a combination of the three. You can also get your subscribers to market your newsletter for you. We’ll talk about each of those tactics below.

Email Acquisition

Newsletter marketing really boils down to email list building.

Email acquisition is a critical part of marketing a newsletter. If you don’t build your subscriber base, you won’t have anyone to send your newsletter to. So unless you want to send marketing emails out into the ether for no reason, you’ll need to build your list.

Here’s how.

Lead Capture Forms

First of all, you’ll want to put lead capture forms wherever it makes sense on your website. The shorter the form is, the better. Ideally, it should have two fields:

The subscriber’s email address so you can send them the newsletter.
Their first name so you can personalize the newsletter instead of using a generic salutation (e.g., “Hey John” instead of “Hey there”).

If you don’t have a webpage, most email marketing platforms allow you to create landing pages within the platform. Wherever you host the page, continuously work to make the page convert better. There are a lot of free landing page optimization tools you can use to do that.

Digital Advertising

There are a lot of digital advertising channels available to help you generate more leads. The primary options are:

Lead form ads. You can deliver these ads through networks like Google Search, Facebook, and LinkedIn. They allow someone to subscribe to your newsletter without stopping what they’re doing.
Native ads. These ads look like normal content instead of an ad. That’s why it’s essential to make sure the landing page includes relevant content instead of just a pitch to subscribe to your newsletter because people who click native ads are in content consumption mode. Share a web-based issue of your newsletter with a subscription form at the bottom.

Website Visitor Identification

Website visitor identification converts up to 40 percent of your anonymous website visitors into leads even if they don’t fill out a form. You can also collect other data (e.g., automotive details and homeownership). If you decide to accept advertisers, this information can be valuable when putting together a sales pitch.

Referral Programs

Many of the top newsletters use referral programs to get their subscribers to refer their friends. The Hustle made this newsletter marketing tactic popular with a milestone referral program. As a subscriber refers more new subscribers, you reward them as they hit higher tiers. For example, you might send someone a sticker when they get five referrals, a t-shirt when they get fifteen referrals, etc.

The tactics listed above have taken newsletters from zero subscribers to over a million. Of course, it takes time. But if you’d like to jumpstart your newsletter marketing efforts, sign up for website identification software today to get some free leads.