A newsletter is part of your email marketing campaign and is crucial to the growth of your business. For a Saas business, newsletters are a must-have. How else can you share ideas and announcements, create value and brand awareness?
A newsletter is something your readers should look forward to seeing in their email inboxes. The content of your newsletter must be able to engage not only your existing customers and subscribers but also help you generate leads and bring in potential customers.
Since a newsletter is all about content, the copy (the way you write and present the content) is its strongest pillar - what makes your customer subscribe, remain subscribed, or unsubscribe.
Before you talk about that, let us quickly address the following question: Why do you even need a newsletter in the first place?
How Newsletters can Benefit your Business?
Tell your story
There is only so much you can tell about your brand on your website. A newsletter is a medium that you can use to narrate your story and share the values that your business believes in with your customers. Copywriting plays a vital role in creating/maintaining/sharing the narrative. It dictates what you share and how you share it.
Build an audience for your business
Having a newsletter for your business will allow you to build a beautiful relationship with your customers. You can keep them engaged, interact with them, and it gives you a better chance of addressing their pain points.
As a copywriter, you need to have a way with words- it’s in the job description. Nailing the copy of your newsletter will help you connect with your customers and maintain that relationship with them.
Newsletter Writing Must-Dos
If you are here looking for a magic trick, a shortcut, a perfect formula to follow when it comes to curating a newsletter that fits your business needs, you will find none. To find your voice, you cannot shy away from experimenting. Experiment, experiment and experiment until you hit the jackpot with your content.
However, here are some of the more general tips you should follow to curate an engaging newsletter:
1. Summarize everything nicely
If you have a Saas product (which is why you landed here), it is safe to assume that you also have a content marketing strategy in place. Not everyone, however, has the time, patience, or the opportunity to go through every blog you feature on your website. Sending a newsletter is a great way to distribute the content you have written for your customers. You got to lead the horse to the water and make it drink it too. Summarize and provide a link to the blogs of the week or month (depending on the frequency of your newsletter).
Let your customers know all the latest happenings at your company. Share all important announcements like new features, deals, and more. Pair this up with a clear call-to-action (CTA), and you are good to go.
2. Go the extra mile- give your subscribers valuable insights
While we do not recommend promoting your product too much, it is imperative that you give your readers something to look forward to. The only reason they subscribed to your newsletter is to get insights that they might not find elsewhere. If you are unable to give them that, the unsubscribe button is not hard to notice.
Giving them relevant and engaging content is a must to keep them subscribed. How can you do that? For a copywriter, understanding some of the pain points of your customers is the ideal starting point. What are some of the questions they want to be answered? How can you help create a better experience for them? Ask these questions before you sit down to write that email.
Note: To understand if your subscribers find your content relevant, you must track the response to your emails. How many of your subscribers ended up opening the email? How many shared it with other people? Did they visit any of the links you included?
Once you have the data, making an effective content strategy will become easier.
3. Have a killer, hard-to-ignore subject line
Regardless of what anyone may say, first impressions do matter. Since the subject of your email is the only ‘preview’ your readers would get, you need to make it so impactful that they cannot help but open the email. All your copywriting skills come into play here, so keep the word limit in mind and be precise with your subject line. It is always a good idea to personalize the subject line. Imagine someone calling out your name from the crowd- you cannot help but look for the source. You can go the funny route or the click-bait route (try not to make it too click-batey)- anything to grab attention.
4. Add a personal touch to your newsletter
It is better to leave a personal anecdote for your readers. Adding a personal touch can help your readers relate to the content you write. It allows them to have (albeit one-sided) conversation with you and helps build a rapport. Think of it as a diary but instead of keeping it to yourself, you share it with people who want to know your insights and opinions.
Tell a story, share a childhood memory or a funny incident that occurred in your company. For your newsletter content to resonate with your readers, it has to read more like a conversation between friends and less like a stranger rambling on the internet. Keep your tone informal and easy going.
5. Use Simple Language
Unless your target audience includes PhD scholars/you are providing your readers with a dictionary, do not add unnecessarily complicated words that are not used in day-to-day conversations. Keep it straightforward, avoid passive voice as much as you can, and try to not overkill with too many adjectives. Don’t treat your newsletter as a sales brochure. It is more important to build a rapport with your customers than to push sales. In our opinion, a newsletter should ideally be treated as a medium of communication with your subscribers, community, and prospective customers. Should you tell them about all the new stuff you have in store for them? Absolutely. Is that the only thing you should talk about? We would not recommend it.
How to Spice Up the Overall Theme of Your Newsletter?
The content is ready. What's next? If the body of your newsletter is locked in, congratulations, you have arrived at the halfway mark. It is now time to add the sprinkles to your ice cream, the coriander to your curry, the finishing touch to your masterpiece.
Pictures, GIFs, Emojis
Humans are visual creatures, which is perhaps why they say A picture is worth a thousand words. Add relevant images to elevate your content- this will make your writing more impactful and help your readers retain the information you give them.
You can also ditch the traditional static images and include moving images aka GIFs to jazz things up.
The world is online, and texting is the most popular way of communication. There is a significant change in the manner in which we converse now- shorter sentences, acronyms, slang, and most importantly, emojis. Make your newsletter eye-catching by adding emojis in relevant places. (Pro tip: You might need to search the meaning and context for certain emojis and maybe get someone younger to proofread.)
Personal recommendations
Did you watch a movie, a documentary, a YouTube video that absolutely blew your mind? Share it with your readers! Have a catchy song stuck in your head? Share it with your readers! Had a #TIL moment? You guessed it right. Share it with your readers!
Let them know an actual, living, breathing human being writes these emails and their taste in music and films is enviable.
Some examples of SaaS newsletters
If you have multiple accounts on random websites on the internet, chances are that your inbox gets flooded with (mostly promotional) emails. It can be hard to sift through the debris to find the gold, which is why we curated a list of our favorite newsletters from SaaS companies.
Intercom
Intercom is a platform that aids businesses in building better customer relationships with personalized messages. Their weekly newsletter provides industry insights and weekly roundups. We love their use of simple, easy-to-follow language and pop culture references here and there. It makes their content more effective and fun to read.
Grammarly
Every writer’s guardian angel, Grammarly is a tool that, as the name suggests, proofreads your write-ups to eliminate grammatical mistakes, among other things. Their weekly newsletter solves any and every problem their users might face.
What makes their emails stand out is the usage of minimal and creative copy, clear CTAs, graphic elements, and well-represented statistics.
Revue
Revue is a tool that helps you set up newsletters. You can choose a template, access analytics like click and open rate, maintain your email list, and more. Their newsletter arrives every Tuesday with .
What we like best about their newsletter is the addition of personal anecdotes and recommendations from their founder. They avoid self-promotion and instead focus on general topics that people can relate to and find value.
