78: Are email newsletters still effective in 2024? Email best practices for small businesses.
In this episode of ill communication, I’m talking about a critical piece of infrastructure all small businesses need in 2024.
I’m referring to your email marketing and email newsletters.
I’m sharing everything you need to know about email marketing this year including some email best practices, what’s working, and what’s not working.
Plus, I need to alert you to some big changes with email marketing and deliverability that are coming up that you need to know about.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Whether email marketing and email newsletters are still worth your time
Why it’s crucial that you diversify your marketing streams
The difference between different types of email marketing
How often you should be sending emails (hint: it’s more than you think!)
What the data says about what types of emails you should be sending
The best email service provider to use
The new rules you need to be aware of this year
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Email marketing is still very relevant and important for small businesses in 2024. If you need help with finding out how to write email newsletters people love to read, or you want someone to write your emails for you - please reach out to me! I have a few different ways I can support you to make sure you’re getting the most ROI from your email marketing.
If you haven’t done it yet, you should totally subscribe to my email list. It’s the VIP Copy and Cocktails Club and you can sign up at kimkiel.com/newsletter.
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[00:00:03] Welcome to ill communication, copywriting tips and sales strategies for small business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist, and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts, and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started. Well. Hey there, my sweet friend. Today we're talking about a critical piece of infrastructure all small businesses need in 2024. I'm referring to your email marketing and email newsletters. Over the last couple of weeks, I've had a few great questions and conversations with clients and marketers about email that I want to share with you. You'll hear about some best practices, what's working and not working, and I need to alert you to some big changes with email marketing and deliverability that are coming up that you need to know about. So make sure you stick through the whole episode to get all the goods. Today I'm going to answer is email marketing and our email newsletters still effective in 2024? What is an email newsletter and how often should I send it? I'll share the pros and cons of highly designed email newsletters versus simple text based newsletters, and I have a surprising answer to the question which email service provider should I use? And then I'm going to share a couple of big changes Google and Yahoo are making that will affect your email marketing, deliverability and effectiveness.
[00:02:02] So let's get into it. Is email marketing and our email newsletters still effective in 2024? And the short answer is heck yes. Email marketing is probably never going to go out of style. And if anything, email marketing is where you have the most profit potential for your business. While you can show up and grow followers and connections on social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, you are totally at the whim of their algorithms. You post something on your IG stories or LinkedIn profile, and if people aren't watching or engaging, there's a good chance they'll miss your content altogether. Whereas when you send an email, it'll land in someone's inbox and stay there until they see it. Click it and read it. The algorithms are changing all the time, and it's pretty exhausting keeping up with the trends and hacks to get more engagement and views. And besides, you don't own those platforms and you risk losing your followers if your account gets shut down or locked out for any reason. So it's wise to use social media to build connections and nurture your followers, and then get your followers to subscribe to your email newsletter, where you can communicate with them with a little more assurance and engagement.
[00:03:25] Just like we need to diversify our revenue streams, you want to diversify your marketing streams to an email. Marketing is an essential tool for small businesses. And it isn't just my opinion either. Constant contact recently released a small business report that found that 55% of consumers who want to keep up to date with businesses they love, say email, is their most preferred method of communication. In comparison, SMS clocks in at 17%, Facebook at 14%, Instagram and TikTok are five and 3%, respectively, and LinkedIn and Twitter X are only 2%. Of course, there's variation in the generation of your audience and where they're most likely to hang out. But for my audience of elder millennials and Gen Xers, most of us trust and use email for business communications. Now let's answer the question. What is an email newsletter and how often should I send it? Now first there are a few different terms you might hear. Email newsletter e-blast broadcast email or just a good old email. What's the difference? An email newsletter, e-blast or broadcast email are pretty interchangeable terms. They're all referring to an email or an electronic mail sent to a group of subscribers. Some marketers differentiate an e-newsletter and an e-blast by the content, and E newsletter is more regular. Newsy delivers connection and some value.
[00:05:10] Whereas an e-blast refers to a sales or promotional email. I personally never use the terms e-blast, and instead I pretty much call all the emails you send regularly to your list as an e-newsletter. And if you're promoting or selling something as a single email or a sequence, I just call those sales emails. A question I regularly get from the members in the Joy of Copy Club and my clients is how often should I send my email newsletter? And the answer is more often than you think. A lot of small business owners have a belief that an e-newsletter should be sent once a month. We worry we're bugging our subscribers and we're afraid to send too many emails. However, the research shows that the more emails you send, the more you'll sell. And that's not to say that every email you send should be selling something. But the more frequently you touch base with your subscribers and customers, the more you deliver value. Build, know, like, and trust. Create a little entertainment and surprise and delight the more you'll stay top of mind. So if someone is looking for a referral for a service you provide, the more likely your subscriber will recommend you. And when you're ready to sell something or promote an event, your audience will already be warmed up because you'll have stayed connected and you'll have delivered value. And there is a risk of sending too few emails of not emailing enough.
[00:06:48] I recently had a conversation with a member of the Joy of Copy Club. She had a year end promotion for a new offer and sent several emails to promote it, as is best practice in what we teach inside the club. As is common when you're in a promotion and setting more emails than usual, she had a few unsubscribes and a few people commenting that they didn't like all the emails. But as I dug a little deeper, I found out that she typically only sends a monthly newsletter unless she's promoting something and sends a few more. So it made a lot of sense that people who were only used to hearing from her once a month would be surprised to suddenly get a bunch of emails promoting something. So I encouraged her to increase the frequency that she sends her email newsletter, ideally aiming for weekly. And here's the thing if you're delivering good value, great insights, a little surprise and delight. If you're writing emails people enjoy reading, it's highly unlikely they'll be annoyed with hearing from you more often. And it's less of a shocker when you do go into promotion mode and send a few more emails in a given week. So if you're wondering how often you should email your list, ideally aim for weekly or bi weekly. And some marketers, of course, email multiple times a week or even daily.
[00:08:14] Sephora, The Gap and other commercial brands send me emails almost daily. I don't get annoyed, I just delete them if I'm not interested. But when I'm going shopping or need something, I'll search my inbox for their emails looking for the latest trends, some info or a coupon code. If you send great emails, people won't be annoyed. And remember they signed up to your email list because they want to hear from you. They perceive you to be an authority in your field, so don't leave them hanging. Give them what they came for. Another question I get a lot is about what email newsletters should look like, should they be beautifully designed graphical emails, or should they be simple text only emails? A lot of e-commerce and product based brands prefer sending graphic HTML designed emails, and it makes sense they can showcase their products in a graphical format. However, there is some very interesting data about why graphic and design emails might not be the best format for your newsletter. Studies show that while people say they like beautiful graphic HTML newsletters, in fact and in practice they actually prefer plain text emails. The data shows that plain text emails get higher open rates, higher clicks, and higher engagement. And it could be for a few different reasons like load time. Some graphic HTML newsletters take longer to load and open. They might appear like a promotional email, so they'll end up in the promotions tab or the spam folder.
[00:09:58] They might not be optimized for mobile display or dark mode, which makes them difficult to read, and they might not be accessible to screen readers or other tools people with disabilities might use. Stats show that plain text emails get 21% higher open rates and 17% higher click through rates than HTML emails. And there's this. If you're sending a quick email to a friend, it would be super weird to send it with fancy headers and footers and images throughout. It would look like a cold corporate promotional message. A plain text email looks like a message from a friend, so treat your email subscribers in your newsletter list like you're sending a simple letter to a friend. And if you're really unsure of what to do, experiment with your newsletter. Send some emails that are super designed and some that are very plain and simple. See what the response is. Check your open rates, click rates engagement. Track your sales. If you're going to go with a more graphical HTML newsletter, please work with a pro email designer who can make sure it's optimized for screen readers, mobile and dark mode display. And by the way, there's a lot more to this debate, so I'll link to a few of the studies I mentioned here in the show notes. So check those out if you're interested.
[00:11:24] The emails I write and send for my clients and myself are very plain, but I do include the odd gif or an image on occasion to break up the monotony and infuse a little surprise and delight. Another common question I get from my clients and community is which email service provider is best? And I have a surprising answer to that question. The best email service provider is the one you'll actually use, especially when you're just starting out in business, or if you're just starting to email your list a little more regularly. Select an email service provider that's affordable to you and that doesn't intimidate you. Too many of us get hung up on researching and overthinking which email service provider to use. We stall and second guess and that we don't ever get ourselves set up in emailing. So honestly, just pick and choose one and use it until you outgrow it, or until you need something more sophisticated that allows you to segment or tag or gives you better data. For me personally, I started using MailChimp because I wasn't intimidated by it. It was affordable and I found it fairly straightforward. As I've grown my list and want to do a few more sophisticated things, I've recently switched to ConvertKit. There are lots of other email service providers that help you send broadcast emails to your subscribers, like Flow Desk, A.weber, Mailerlite, activecampaign. There are literally hundreds of email service providers you can choose from, so ask around your business networks and look for reviews on ease of use, especially if you're just starting to be serious about emailing more often.
[00:13:04] And please make sure you are actually using an email service provider like ConvertKit or MailChimp. You cannot send broadcast emails from your personal Outlook or Gmail account and BCC all your contacts. That is super janky. There's no way to include an unsubscribe link, which means you're not compliant with spam laws, and BCC emails are often flagged as spam and won't be delivered. Now, speaking of deliverability, there are some very big changes to email coming up that you need to know about. Starting in February 2024, Google and Yahoo are requiring mass email senders to follow new rules. You'll be required to authenticate your emails using specific security protocols. You must have one click list unsubscribe option that unsubscribe someone within two days. You must maintain a spam complaint rate under 0.3%, and you must send broadcast emails from authenticated domain like Kim at Kim Dotcom, rather than Kim at gmail or Kim at yahoo.com. Lastly, Google is deleting inactive accounts, which means it's deleting accounts where people haven't logged in for more than two years. Now, a lot of us set up free accounts to subscribe to different email lists or for certain phase in our life. Like I had a few different accounts dedicated to my love of the Beastie Boys, like Beastie Girl underscore K at yahoo.com, and then we ditched those email accounts.
[00:14:40] Or we forget the logins. Those inactive accounts are a liability for Google and Yahoo, and they're starting to delete them. So if you're sending emails to a deleted account, it will show up on your record as a hard bounce, meaning it was a bogus email. It didn't land. And the more. Hard bounces your email domain gets, the lower your deliverability score in reputation and the more compromised your email marketing becomes. All of which is to say, you need to have a plan to clean your list regularly. Experts recommend you scrub or remove anyone from your list who hasn't opened or engaged with your emails in 90 days. Now, I am not the expert to walk you through all those changes or really explain them to you. However, I'm going to connect you with a couple of experts and resources I recommend you follow for the latest advice and steps to take. First, check with your current email service provider for their latest information on how they're handling these updates. I also recommend and trust the content and research the company litmus provides, and I recently attended a brilliant webinar hosted by Sheryl Rarick all about these upcoming deliverability and authenticated changes. She broke down the information in an easy to understand and digestible way, so I'm going to link to her as well.
[00:16:04] Please check out all those links and follow other email marketers and deliverability experts to make sure you keep your email, newsletter and marketing system healthy and doing its job. Because here's the thing email marketing is still very relevant and very important for small businesses. In 2024, the global email market is valued at 7.5 billion USD and expected to grow to 17.9 billion by 2027. If you need help with finding out how to write email newsletters people love to read, or if you want someone to write your emails for you, please reach out to me. I have a few different ways I can support you to make sure you're getting the most ROI from your email marketing. And hey, if you haven't done it yet, you should totally subscribe to my email list. It's the VIP Copy and Cocktails club. Sign up at Kim Kilcommon newsletter. You can look forward to seeing me pop into your inbox weekly with a little letter to my newest friend. That's it for me today. Thank you for tuning in. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Ill Communication. Hey, if you enjoy these snack sized strategies and tips, you'll want to join my VIP Coffee and Cocktails Club. It's my email newsletter where I share more coffee tips, sales strategies, and the occasional recipe for my favorite beverage or appetizer du jour. To subscribe, visit Kim keil.com/newsletter. Thanks for tuning in.
Resources Mentioned
Learn about email marketing statistics
Learn about plain text vs. HTML emails
Learn about the pros and cons of text-based emails
Why you shouldn’t send image-only emails
Learn the new email deliverability rules
Watch Cheryl Rerick’s deliverability webinar
Additional Resources
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