Effective Monthly Newsletters (Best Examples and Practices)

You want clicks. You want conversions. You want people to care about your monthly newsletters. Best practices really make for fewer unsubscribes, more attention to important news, and most importantly getting your audience to take the action. Whether it is a sale you are promoting, a new product you want to draw attention to, or a friendly reminder that “someone” has not visited your site in a while—monthly newsletters can really make all the difference in digital marketing. As an SEO company, we often get asked what some of the “best practices” are in email marketing and we found some well-known companies that do it so well!

#1: Pret

Best Practice: Focus on the Product you Want to Sell  

Pret is an international company known for their fantastic organic coffee and natural food. This email blast is effective because it showcases their frappes and fruit smoothies. Rather than trying to fit a ton of information into one email newsletter (as they have multiple offerings at their locations), they focus on the product that they want users to pay attention to, and of course and go purchase. If you can focus on the product that you want to boost sales on, you are more likely to have users take the action you want them to take.

#2 Sephora

Best Practice: Unique Campaigns and Contests

If you want to be able to turn-heads and get some attention with your emails, give your readers a trip to Paris! Okay, this may not be possible for everyone, but the point is still sound. Campaigns and contests give readers a reason to click through to your site, and it drives engagement, which is ultimately the action you want them to take. It also gives you an opportunity to get them on your preferred client list or have them see your eCommerce store or any number of conversion actions while they are visiting your site.

#3 Fiji Airways

Best Practice: Get to the point

Fiji airways wants their readers to know exactly how much flights cost and what the low fares are at the time they send out an email. They do a few things that are best-practice notable. First and foremost, they get to the point. What do I mean? Well, they don’t leave you guessing about the relevant information—they have the prices laid out for you with a plane flying over (Fiji, presumably). Simple, but effective. Readers do not have to do guess work. Further, their information is very relevant. This gives a sense of urgency—if people want to get these fares, this email should not sit in their inbox for two weeks.

#3 Uber

Best Practice: Effective, Simple Copy  

Uber does a fantastic job with their emails because they are so simple and effective. Someone glancing at an email from Uber on their phone immediately knows what they are trying to get you a message about. In this case it is their $2 Uber Pool fare pass, which needed to be signed-up for in this particular location. The top section explains what the campaign is about, and as you scroll down you get a step-by-step breakdown of how to make it happen! Simple but effective copy makes for great email newsletters.

#4 Dropbox

Best Practice: The Perfect Friendly Reminder

Do you have subscribers to your email list who just simply haven’t used your service or visited your website in a while? Dropbox knew exactly how to deal with this. The message is simple: come back, and you will be happy you started using Dropbox again. Their before and after imagery, along with the language they chose to use—that the individual’s dropbox was getting “lonely” and a list of services they offer, is the perfect combination to remind a subscriber to come back and use your services again.

#5 Living Spaces

Best Practice: Holiday email marketing done right

Holiday email marketing can be tricky because you want to figure out a way to reach out to the emotions of your readers without necessarily going full-blown santa and reindeer templates (not saying their is anything wrong with going that route). Living Spaces found a way to incorporate “Friendsgiving” as a modern holiday into their push for furniture sales in the newsletter above. What I like about this is that (A) it uses “Friendsgiving” rather than “Thanksgiving,” which is eye-grabbing and unique, (B) it incorporates the holidays and still captures the emotion of the season, and (C) it makes a lot of sense—before you hosted people, if you were contemplating getting new furniture, wouldn’t that be the perfect time to do so?

#6 Yuppie Chef

Best Practice: Make what you are selling immediately useful & know your target audience

I love this email from Yuppie Chef. The best practice here is not only that they give their readers an awesome recipe for bolognese (although that in of itself would have my attention), they are a cookware eCommerce retailer, and right below the mann photo/recipe, you can see all of the tools you would need to craft a perfect bolognese yourself—meaning that they make their products immediately useful in practice to the consumer! If people can see a practical use for your products/services, they are going to feel a lot more inclined to make the purchase. The takeaway here is that not only do you need to create a sense of urgency, but you need to create a sense of desire. Why would someone opening your email want your product? What can they use it for? In this case, the reader is handed an awesome recipe, and they can immediately see the usefulness in the tools that Yuppie Chef sells.

The second part to this awesome email is that they know their target audience—foodies and people that want the best tools to cook (not necessarily people that just want to eat). The reason this stood out to me is because, as someone who loves to cook, I saw the Le Creuset stainless steel pot and had an emotional reaction—I wanted it! Not only do I love that they have given me a recipe, but I appreciate that they recommended the best pot to boil my pasta in. They have fed me and added to my Christmas list, well done Yuppie Chef.

Do you have favorite strategies that have worked well for email marketing? Is there anything that you struggle with when crafting your own email campaigns? Let us know in the comments section below, we would love to hear from you!

Image Credits: Campaign Monitor; HubSpot

About The Author

Jason Hawkins / http://www.themiamiseocompany.com

Jason Hawkins is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Miami SEO Company. He has over ten years of experience in search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization and lead generation. His core responsibilities include identifying ways to increase value of services rendered, training staff on advanced SEO topics, and A/B testing internal processes to consistently improve client return on investment.