The tech industry is worth a mind-boggling $5.3 trillion. If you’re looking to start a tech newsletter, you have a large and high-value market you can capitalize on.
The great thing about newsletters is they’re cheap to create and cheaper to distribute. The not-so-good thing about them is you’ll be competing in a crowded industry where tech news is a dime a dozen.
Is it still possible to create a successful technology newsletter? Sure. Is it going to be easy? Nope. But if you’re determined to make it, here are seven tips that will set your tech newsletter up for success.
7 Ways to a Successful Tech Newsletter
1. Be Clear About Your Goals
What do you want your newsletter to do for you? Do you want it to:
- Introduce new subscribers to your brand?
- Engage your subscribers and build trust?
- Promote special offers and new products?
- Bring traffic to your website?
- Provide information that is not available anywhere else?
Knowing your objectives is critical because if you know what they are, the steps you need to take and your priorities become a lot clearer.
2. Know Your Niche
You might already know who your audiences are but this is such an important aspect that it bears mentioning. The tech market is huge but it’s impossible and unwise to try and target it entirely.
In any case, your products or services probably cater to certain audiences. The more targeted your communication, the more likely you are to succeed. So, find out what they need and their behaviors. Make sure your newsletter finds a way to serve them.
3. Establish Your Sources
Who are your sources? The quality and originality of your sources will make your newsletter’s information more valuable. While you can always hop on Google to jumpstart your research process, find ways to make your articles unique even if it’s just in the way you present your information.
Be discriminating in reviewing your sources. A Wikipedia article, for example, isn’t as reliable as information from TechCrunch or CNET.
4. Choose the Right Tools and Templates
There are many digital tools for email marketing, but not all will work for you. After all, they may not fit your budget or offer the functionalities you need.
For a wide variety of newsletter templates, consider online tools like PosterMyWall. The online design tool offers templates for a wide range of themes, including tech email templates. You’re bound to find one (or 2, or 3, or 10) that is a perfect fit for your brand. You can even tweak their designs to get them to look just right.
In addition to its wide selection of professional-looking templates, there are some free features. If you decide to commit to a paid subscription, the site’s cheapest premium subscription is easily affordable at around $10 a month.
5. Be Crafty With Your Content
Create engaging content that encourages dialogue. Here are some tips that will help your content strategy:
- Spark curiosity with a short, concise, and click-worthy subject line.
- Choose topics that resonate with your target audience’s pain points and expectations.
- Add smartly designed images in strategic areas of your newsletter. They will remove ambiguity, make the content easier to read, and lower bounce rates.
6. Ensure You’re Legally Compliant
Compliance laws protect consumers from all sorts of email scams. So, take the time to ensure that you aren’t violating any of them.
Here are the two most common regulations to watch out for:
- GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): The world’s toughest set of data protection rules, it sets expectations about how businesses can collect, process, and transfer personal information from individuals who have given their “opt-in” consent to receive marketing information.
- CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act): It provides an opt-out policy for users who are no longer interested in receiving your emails. It also outlines what your sender address and content can contain.
Violating these can entail hefty fines, so make sure to double-check your newsletter for compliance.
7. Analyze Your KPIs
To see the results of your efforts and know how you can improve, check how your emails are performing through the following KPIs:
- Bounce rate: The percentage of subscribers that leave without visiting a second page and taking the desired action.
- Click-through rate: The percentage of subscribers who engaged with your email and clicked on the desired link.
- Conversion rate: The percentage of subscribers who performed the desired action.
- Open rate: The percentage of subscribers who opened your email.
- Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of subscribers who opted out of your mailing list after a particular email campaign.
This due diligence will help you tweak your newsletter in ways that can make it a digital success.
Tips That Do the Trick
Follow these tried-and-true tips to elevate your email newsletter game:
- Personalize, personalize, personalize: Personalized subject lines make your email nearly 50% more likely to be opened and ensure higher engagement.
- Forty-one percent of all emails are opened on mobile devices. If you want to grab your audience’s attention, keep the subject line under 50 characters, use pre-header texts, choose descriptive content rather than images to convey your thoughts, and use CTAs.
- Don’t stack lines: Leave blanks before and after paragraphs and around CTAs to create an aesthetically-pleasing newsletter that doesn’t have overwhelming blocks of text.
- Do A/B testing: See which newsletters work best by sending out two versions and comparing their KPIs. For example, you can test different CTA buttons, different images, layouts, texts, etc.
- Offer incentives: Free shipping, contests, gated contests, discounts, and sweepstakes can influence customer behavior and increase your engagement substantially.
- Check email frequency: 34% of users unsubscribe from mailing lists because they get too many emails. Prevent user fallout by getting your email frequency just right. Prioritize quality content instead of sending out as many newsletters as possible.
Finally, keep your newsletters under 10 megabytes so they don’t automatically land in the spam folder.
Successful Newsletters Take Time
Successful newsletters don’t happen overnight. They take time, especially if you’ve never published a newsletter before. While these tips will make sure that you’re off to a good start, you’ll need to study your newsletters’ performance, adjust your strategy as you learn, and be patient.
With the right insights and tools like PosterMyWall, you can still make your voice heard in the crowded technology space.
