There’s a special kind of nervousness that comes just after you click send on an email newsletter – it’s the moment when you notice the spelling mistake in the subject line, remember the link you forgot to add, and realise that you’ve just addressed 4,000 people as ‘Hi FIRSTNAME’.
Once the newsletter has gone, however, there’s no getting it back. You can send a correction, apologise, or quietly hope no one notices, but the email itself is already sitting in all those inboxes, screaming ‘unprofessional’ at the top of its voice.
Thankfully, most newsletter disasters are easily avoided. Before you press that final button, stop, take a breath, and check these five things.
1 - Your Authentication Settings
Let’s start with the technical bit because there’s not much point perfecting the rest of your newsletter if it never reaches anyone.
Email authentication is how receiving systems confirm that your newsletter really came from you. Protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are there to prove that your email is legitimate and not something sent by a scammer.
If those settings are wrong, your email could be rejected or flagged as spam. Everything may look fine from your side, but no one is reading your carefully crafted words.
Before sending, check that:
- Your SPF and DKIM records are properly set
- You have a suitable DMARC policy
- Your sending address matches your authenticated domain
- Your email service provider isn’t giving you any warnings
These are settings you typically only need to do once, though you should update them if you’ve changed email service or your newsletter’s email address, and a little every-now and then administrative check means you can send with confidence.
If you want to learn more about this, check out my previous blog ‘People Not Opening Your Emails? Read This Before You Blame Your Copywriter’ here.
2 - Your Merge Tags
Merge tags are the little bits of code that grab information from your email database into the newsletter, turning ‘Hello recipient’ into ‘Hello Susan’ or whoever. They add personalised details and make the master email feel as though it has been written specifically for the person reading it.
When they work, everything’s great. When they don’t, Susan gets called |FNAME| and your attempt at conquering personalisation falls a bit flat.
Every email platform handles merge tags slightly differently, so don’t assume that a merge tag copied from a previous marketing run will work without a hiccup. Send yourself a test email and make sure names, company details, dates, and any other personalised fields appear exactly as you intended.
You should also check what happens when the data is incomplete. For example, not everyone on your email list will have a first name recorded, and ‘Hello ’ followed by an awkward blank space is very telling. In most systems, you can set a default phrase when this happens which will make sure the email still reads naturally without the personalised information.
3 - Your Content
Now we get to the newsletter itself. Is it interesting? Has it got value? Does it sound like you? And, when it comes down to it, would you want to read it?
If your content is poor, then your newsletter is probably doing more harm than good. Luckily, I’ve written plenty of advice for you to read that’ll help you get this bit sorted! Try the following articles to help you create an exciting email body that’s bringing something to your subscribers beyond a generic Thursday update.
- How to use Stories to Sell Without Selling
- 3 Massive Email Marketing Mistakes Coaches Make
- The Psychology Behind Successful Marketing
Before you send it, take the few minutes it takes to read it aloud – if you find yourself losing interest halfway through, it might be worth a review…
4 - Your Purpose
Every newsletter should have a purpose. That doesn’t mean every email has to make an immediate sale, but it does need to do something.
What is it they’re going to take away from this interaction? Perhaps you want to teach your readers something useful, build trust, introduce a new product, or remind people that your service is for when they need it. Whatever the purpose is, you should be able to define that takeaway.
Ultimately, if you don’t know what the newsletter is trying to achieve, your reader probably won’t work it out, either.
Once you’ve determined the takeaway, read the email again and make sure it works. A newsletter promising five useful checks should, for example, contain five useful checks. Oh look! – this one does.
5 - Your CTA
Your Call to Action, or CTA, shuffles the reader along the sales funnel and tells them what to do next. It turns the newsletter from a nice something to read into marketing with purpose.
That next step should be clear, logical, and small. It could direct them to your website for more information, or straight to a product page to ‘buy now’. If you want them to book a call, give them a button that takes them straight to the booking page.
Don’t make your reader work for it – your email newsletter should contain the code for the action. Simply saying ‘visit our website’ is vague, and leaving them to search for your contact page rather than just having a link is going to mean you’re never hearing from them. People are lazy and your competitors will have made it easy.
Then check that the link actually works – please! The most beautifully designed button in the world is not much use if it leads nowhere. Click every link in your test email before you send the real thing and remember to check it for both mobile and desktop.
Get Your Newsletter Right with Nathan Littleton
A final check doesn’t need to take hours. In most cases, a few minutes is all it takes to catch a broken link, fix a merge tag, check you’re saying what you actually meant to say, and stop you from having a post-send panic.
Of course, getting the newsletter ready and building an email list might take a little longer. I’m Nathan Littleton, and I help businesses create email marketing that’s proven to get results. To get support with your newsletters, from the early planning through to that last run-through before you press send, book a consultation with me today.
