Email Trick: Create A Month of Great Newsletters in 20 Minutes
In this step-by-step video tutorial, I'll show you how to create an entire month’s worth of effective newsletters in only a few minutes.
Touch your toes if writing newsletters is frustrating to you. Alright, stand back up. Newsletters get a bad reputation for being annoying or even ineffective, but newsletters have the potential to be your most powerful marketing tool, and as such, they should be a priority for you and your team.
Avoiding a newsletter is a lot like refusing t0 claim your lottery ticket because you're too tired.
But I’m too tired to claim my lottery ticket…
To help make writing newsletters easier, I've developed a system for quickly curating and developing newsletters that I like to call the emotional sandwich. This system should only take you a few minutes and save you a ton of time so you can focus on more important things like trending on TikTok (that's a joke).
Let's get to it!
Video Tutorial: Create 200 Article Outlines in 30 Minutes
Here is the tutorial where I show you how to create 20 newsletters in 20 minutes. If you're more of a reader you can follow along via the step-by-step instructions below.
Download the Article Template Files
Click the link below to download a free project with the newsletter templates so you can follow along with the tutorial! You must be a logged-in Curious Refuge subscriber to download the file. If you don’t have a Curious Refuge account you can create one by clicking the ‘Join’ button at the top of the page, or click here to create an account.
How Often Should I Send a Newsletter?
You should send newsletters once a week. No exceptions. People will learn to trust you and your brand for your consistency. You should always send your newsletter on the same day of the week. Get people in the habit of looking forward to your inspiration.
Short answer, Every Week.
What Day Should I Send a Newsletter?
From my own experience, newsletters that go out on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday do the best, because people are more likely to check their email. Never send a newsletter out on the weekend. I personally like Wednesday as you never have to worry about Monday holidays or extra-long weekends.
How do I Increase My Newsletter Open Rate?
To increase your open rate I recommend the following steps.
1. Make Sure Your List is High Quality
You should not be tricking your users into signing up for your newsletter or mailing list. Be 100% clear that in signing up for an account they will receive emails. If you aren't clear about this they will inevitably not open your email, or worse, report you as spam. RIP.
Beep borp… I don’t read my email that often… or sleep.
2. Make Your Subject Line Interesting
The main reason why people aren't opening your email is probably because you have a boring subject lines. You should make all of your subject lines are as interesting and actionable as possible.
Use emotion in the subject line, people don't want to 'Learn' or 'Find Out' they want to 'Explore', 'Behold', and be 'Captivated'. Emotions like joy, wonder, FOMO (fear of missing out), inspiration, and humor are great tools to include in a newsletter title. For example:
Learn How Dancing Can Lead to Weight Loss
Can change to:
The Real Reason J-LO is in Great Shape
The first title was totally boring. The last thing I want to do is learn in my email. The second title makes me curious about a secret that a fitness icon is keeping from me. There is 500% more emotion, leading to 10% more opens.
I also recommend using a consistent tag so people recognize your newsletter. For us we like to use 'Curious Weekly:' at the start of our title.
3. Make Your Preheader Interesting
The pre-header is the little snippet of grey text to the side of the article title. I always recommend making the pre-header a place to add in 'bonus' information and a few titles that didn’t make the cut. Let's use our previous example:
Subject Line: Dancing Weekly: The Real Reason J-Lo is In Great Shape
Preheader: Our Favorite Dance Moves of 2020 + This Modern Studio is Redefining Disco
4. Use Emoji ☀️
Simply put, use emoji in your titles. Emoji generate more opens 🎉.
5. A/B Test Your Headlines
A/B tests or Split Tests are tests that you can run to see which version of your email is performing better. Using A/B tests you can test one title featuring 'Dance Moves' by sending it to 10% of your audience and another featuring an up-and-coming 'Dancer' to another 10% of your audience. The email with a higher open rate or click through rate will be sent to the remaining 80% of your audience.
The winning email would be sent to the bulk of the audience.
6. Get Better at Curating
If people aren't opening you may want to simply try to change up your curation style. Curation is a skill and it takes practice. Over time you will find out which types of links resonate with your audience.
How to Create 4 Monthly Newsletters in 20 Minutes
Ready to quickly create your monthly newsletters? Just follow these steps.
Step 1: Upload Project Files to Google Drive
First things first, you need to upload your files to Google Drive. Once the files are uploaded to your drive you will need to convert them to 'Google' files by opening them and selecting File > Convert to Google Docs or Sheets. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Step 2: Curate Your Links
Now it's time to find some great links for your audience. Every brand has an audience they are trying to reach.
It's important for you to constantly have your ears to the ground so you can curate the best links possible. But how are you going to do that? Simple, just use an RSS curation tool.
These tools curate the best links for industries and keywords, and many of them allow you to sort by popularity. This is important because you know people are already clicking those links!
Here are a few of my favorite link curation tools:
You will repeat this process for around 100 links using keyboard shortcuts. Try to spend less than 5 seconds per article, trust your gut.
After you have quickly found good ideas, go in and curate them to sort out the good from the great.
Once you find a great link simply add it to the spreadsheet. I like to keep my newsletters topics to be as specific as possible. You want people to feel like this is the hidden newsletter they've been waiting for— testing new topics over time.
For example, if you work for an online dance training site it is important to keep your links to 90% dance related. As soon as people feel like you aren't talking directly to them they will stop opening your newsletter, which is bad news.
Step 3: Write Your Commentary and Set Your Dates
Add in one or two sentences of commentary in the appropriate spreadsheet row. It is important to not just describe the contents of the link, but also give your emotional opinion. Why is this link important? What does it mean for the future of your industry? What are people missing by not clicking the link?
If people are subscribed to your newsletter they not only trust you as a news service, but also a tastemaker. This is your opportunity to show why you should be trusted.
Step 4: Generate Your Newsletters
ImageNow it's time to generate your newsletters. To generate newsletters we will use a tool called Document Studio. Document Studio is free and it allows you to generate 20 documents a day, but there is an unlimited paid plan for only $29 a year. Document Studio is an 'Add-On' in Google Sheets which can be found by navigating to 'Add-Ons' Tab.
Once Document Studio is open select the Newsletter Template Google Doc, choose the folder you'd like your newsletters to save in, and select 'Run'. This will create newsletters from the cels you've already edited.
Step 5: Format One Newsletter a Week
Now you have templates with your newsletters, ready for editing. I recommend spending about 5 - 20 minutes each week copying your newsletter into your email management system of choice (MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc.).
This will allow you to add in extra commentary, test your links, and ensure that everything is ready to go.
Should I Clean Up My Newsletter Lists?
Some people like cleaning up their newsletter lists from time-to-time to remove people who haven't opened your newsletter in a certain amount of time like 6 months.
While I understand the sentiment I would recommend not doing this unless you are running into spam problems.
Why? Well, even if someone doesn't open your newsletter they still might see it in your inbox. This is an impression, a single instance of someone seeing your brand and what it stands for. Those impressions add up over time and they can lead to conversions.
So while I know having a 50% Open Rate and 30% Click Through Rate is a sexy metric to brag about, it is only part of a larger marketing battle for impressions, engagements, and conversions.
Explore More About Newsletters
Want to learn more about creating engaging newsletters? Here are a few fantastic resources on the subject.
It should be noted that this article covered a ‘link curation’ style of newsletter. Some brands and individuals employ other strategies like weekly journals or letters from the CEO. These are totally acceptable ways to build a following if your goal is to build your own personal celebrity, but for a community-focused brand you probably want to focus on sharing the best links in your niche using the strategies outlined in this article.
Want to Build Your Own Audience?
I've actually created an online adventure game that teaches you how to do just that. It's called the Curious Millionaire and unlike online courses, it focuses on having fun through adventures and activities. By the end of the program you will launch a profitable business. If this sounds fun go check it out.
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Hopefully you find this strategy to be helpful. Any opportunity to do small batching processes like the one outlined here can save a lot of time. Best of luck on all your newsletters!
Excuse me sir, you seem to be holding your newspaper sideways!