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The SBS Blog

7 Common Email Marketing Newsletter Questions (Answered By a Mailchimp Certified Expert)

2/10/2022

 
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According to recent data, the average audience member spends 10 to 13 seconds reading email newsletters. This may lead you to wonder: What's the ideal length for an email marketing newsletter? Should I be testing? How do I do that?

​Luckily, we've got a Mailchimp Certified expert on our team—Collin Quinn Rice—who is at the ready to answer these questions and more. Here, we share data on email marketing newsletter return on investment (ROI), answers to FAQs, and general tips you can follow to make your newsletters as strong as possible.

Email Marketing ROI

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As noted above, email marketing newsletters have a limited amount of time to hook prospective readers. Despite this initial challenge, emails continue to demonstrate a reliably high ROI (return on investment) across multiple industries. For example, HubSpot data has shown that, on average, email marketing generates a return of $42 for every $1 spent.

Also noted by HubSpot:
  • 78% of marketers reported an increase in engagement with emails in 2021.
  • Over 80% of readers will open a "welcome" email (which is great to remember for lead nurture / inbound marketing campaigns).
  • As much as a 760% increase in revenue was reported by those using segmented campaigns.

7 Email Marketing FAQs: Answered

1. Why should I be segmenting my audience?

First, let’s talk about what segmenting means. When you receive an email newsletter from, say, your favorite clothing brand, what stands out in your mind? For me, it’s usually a intentionally-crafted promo that points out specific items that feel relevant to my interests. The key here is personalization and specificity.

Segmenting our audience allows us to create personalized, relevant, and engaging email newsletters for our readers.

There are many ways to approach segmentation for your organization’s audience; the most important is to identify the ways in which we can specify our content to our audience’s interests. If you’re using Mailchimp, that means creating systems for internal Tagging or asking your audience to self identify into Groups.

Tags are a feature that allow you to organize and identify your audience based on behavior or demographics. Some common Tags might include “VIPs,” “Donors,” or “Lapsed.”

Groups, on the other hand, are contact lists your email audience can sign up for. This allows your audience to tell you about their interests and gives you the power to create targeted campaigns.

Here are some examples of audience segmentations to consider. You can segment based on:
  • ​Desired frequency of Emails: Daily, weekly, monthly, etc
  • Product Line or Industries: Do you offer specific categories of products or services or serve different industries? You can segment your list to increase your content’s relevance to your audience
  • Special Promotions or Incentives: Can your system identify “VIPs” in your audience that you can reward in some way? 
  • Lapsed Customers: Identify customers who haven’t purchased within a certain time period and reengage them

2. Should I be testing (and how do I do that)?

The short answer is YES. Before you even start drafting your email content, you should be identifying possibilities for testing. This could be subject lines, send times, button colors, anything that can help us identify how to better serve your audience. 

Every organization has a unique audience, so how are you ensuring that the email content you are sharing is being seen and engaged with?



The first step is to identify a metric you’d like to test:
  • Are you looking for a higher open rate? 
    • Then you should consider testing subject lines. 
  • How about your click rate? 
    • Then you could consider your calls to action (CTAs)—the action(s) you're asking your reader to take—or your send times (is anyone likely to answer a survey at 7am?). 

Once you’ve identified the test, set up your parameters and send out the campaign. Most important, however, is to wait for your test results. 

The impulse when beginning to test is to test through every campaign. But you have to make sure you have actionable results from your initial test before you start refining your strategy and creating a new test situation.

If your subject line test did not provide substantial, definitive results, consider switching up the types of subject lines you're testing in your next campaign. Or, run the same test again and see if the results change. Patience and attention to metrics is key to running and effective testing strategy.

If you’re using Mailchimp, or another provider that can A/B test your content, explore the possibilities and let your creative juices flow! If starting from scratch, consider splitting your audience in half, and assigning one variable to each segment. And make sure you can track the results in your metrics.

3. What's the ideal length of an email newsletter?

As noted earlier, you have a limited time frame within which to capture a reader's attention. So, brevity, specificity, and clarity are incredibly important when crafting your emails


In general, a strong lead image, a paragraph or two, and a call-to-action/button will suffice, depending on the content you’re sharing. If you’re sharing exclusive content, or a long-format newsletter, you can play with length.

Most emails are never the last stop for subscribers. We are usually asking them to do something, visit a website or fill out a survey. So in order to ensure your audience has the motivation to follow these actions, we have to entice them and follow through with clear direction. Transparency and meeting expectations are instrumental to a strong email strategy.

4. How many items can I include in one newsletter? Is there a cutoff number?

If we are thinking about emails as a stop along the journey to a final destination, then ideally we should only include one major item in our campaigns. It’s okay to follow up with additional points, but make sure that your main topic is given a strong platform, both in terms of layout architecture and copy. 
5. What's the best way to write subject lines?

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. What would make you open an email? Was it personalized? Did it spark your curiosity? Did it offer a great deal? Was it funny? All of these tactics can be tested to craft the perfect template for your emails.

Overall, strength over length is key, with clear expectations as to what subscribers will find within the email.

6. How many CTAs or buttons can I include?

For retail or product-oriented emails, you ideally want to include one strong CTA button, and maybe another link or two leading to the same destination. If you’re following up with additional content, use smaller buttons or a different color so that your content hierarchy prioritizes the main CTA.

For email newsletters that occur on monthly or quarterly cycles, you can include more content for readers to access; however, you may still want to distinguish between primary content (e.g., your main CTA) and secondary content. Your secondary content could include two to four more items, but in that case, consider changing the buttons or layout to differentiate from the primary content.

7. 
Why is my unsubscribe rate so high (or why is my email going to spam)?

There are a number of reasons for unsubscribe rates being high. Is your subject line clearly identifying the purpose of your email? Did all of your links work? Was the campaign mobile-friendly? (Remember, 40% of all emails are viewed on mobile devices.)

All of these things can contribute to people deciding to bail on your email list. Think of every email as a personal interaction with your audience. If you are failing to meet their expectations, or “spamming” them with content they didn’t agree to receive, they are fully justified in deciding to unsubscribe.
It’s recommended to engage with your audience every few years to ask them to “re-subscribe” to your email. Though this is a scary, daunting ask, it ensures that everyone wants to be there. Sure, you might lose some folks along the way, but it’s more important to serve the audience members who are excited to be a part of your organization.

General Tips from Our Mailchimp-Certified Expert

If you're still not sure where to make improvements, here are a few more pieces of Mailchimp-Certified-expert advice:
  • Don't forget to keep your newsletter mobile-friendly. That means:
    • Making sure all text can be read without having to scroll to the side;
    • Balancing text and images so that the email will load quickly;
    • Keeping your CTA buttons easy-to-find and easy-to-tap; and
    • Using a font type, color, and size (14-16pt is recommended) that is readable.
  • Always send a test newsletter before scheduling your final send and proofread carefully.
    • If you make changes, send a new test email and proof it again.
      Consider whether your email is fully inclusive and accessible. (Find more on that here.)
  • In general, your unsubscribes should be under 1% per campaign.

For more insights on boosting email marketing newsletters, check out our IACFP Case Study. And if you’re looking for help with copywriting, strategy, or management - we offer wraparound email marketing services tailored to your needs.
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Genevra Gallo-Bayiates

has a passion for history and personal narratives. As an unabashed word-nerd, Genevra loves to carefully craft language to tell powerful stories. She has a B.F.A. in Theatre Studies and an M.S.Ed in Educational Psychology, which has led to a work history spanning multiple industries, including for-profit corporations, nonprofit organizations, higher education, and the arts.

​With over 20 years experience, Genevra’s expertise as a writer and editor includes social media copywriting, B2B/B2C marketing and advertising, blog and website content development, fundraising messaging, e-learning storytelling, personal branding, and curriculum design. Their journalism and essays have appeared in CMA Today, Time Out Chicago, the Chicago Red Streak, and Haymarket Books. Her playwriting work has been published by Playscripts, Hope & Nonthings, and Commonplace Books. In their free time, Genevra works on racial and social justice initiatives in her hometown of Evanston, IL. She also enjoys exploring Wisconsin, visiting historical sites, and hiking in state and national parks! (she/they)

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Collin Quinn Rice ​

is a performer, photographer, and multimedia artist living in Chicago. Originally from the Milwaukee area, Collin graduated from Northwestern University and they haven’t left since! With a B.A. in Theatre, an (almost) minor in Gender & Sexuality Studies, and a YouTube education in Photoshop, Collin worked with a number of arts organizations and small businesses in Chicago, finding a niche in content creation and social media marketing. They have been acting professionally and taking portraits of artists around town for the last 5 years, and they are the Digital Content Manager of Queer Kid Stuff, an edutainment company spreading radical joy through queer and intersectional all-ages media.

When not scrolling through Instagram or pretending to be other people, Collin can be found knitting sweaters, drinking way too much coffee, or roller skating along their favorite body of water, Lake Michigan. Collin lives with their partner, Wilson the cat, and Winona the dog. (they/them)


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