The basics are simple: you have a base that gets splashed with your awesome emails, 146% of them are opened by your users, they read every line of what you wrote in your letter, they go straight to your site, they make a purchase.

Let’s describe how emailing should work in a perfect world and what you should strive for. Here are the main stages of the process:

Building the mailing base

Sending letters

Opening of the letters

Reading (or not reading)

Visiting the site (or not)

Commission of the target action (order services, registration for the event, click on the link to the article, etc.)

In fact, there are important points that ruin this fairy tale: the open rate depends on the size of the base, the regularity of dispatches. And the open rate and click rate affect the conversion, so your success depends on them. But these are metrics. What affects them? Content. All of the above, including the rate of commission of the target action, depends on it.

Creating the base is a delicate matter

The backbone of the newsletter is the subscriber base; without readers, even the best letter is meaningless. We take care of the base, we don't burn it out, and we don't cheat. However, keeping your database is not enough - you also need to enlarge it. You can do this in several ways.

Well, first of all, do not buy. Never. Even if you really want to. Just if you have such an idea, it's better to understand right away - it will not work, because these are people who either do not use these addresses, or they do not like you - you're a spammer for them. What kind of loyalty can we talk about? In addition, the mailing service can get really mad at you and ruin your karma.

Where do the subscribers come from in the base?

Subscriptions with useful content

First of all, it's the 'Subscribe to Newsletter' button/form on your site. That is, if a person is interested in the content on your site, they become your subscriber and will receive your newsletter. In this case, the user, at a minimum, expects to receive e-mail content of a level 'no worse' than what he saw on the site. So keep the bar high.

Bonuses and discounts for subscriptions.

Yes, yes, this method has been used since dinosaurs walked the Internet. Yet, not only does it still work, but it's also improving. One of the best ways is to offer useful content for a subscription. While in B2C it makes sense to offer discounts on products, in B2B, where the buying cycle is much longer, the main bonus is usefulness.

Events

Of course, a noticeable part of the base grows with events. The mechanics are as follows: a user registers for an event they're interested in. On the day (for offline events - the day before) of the event he receives a reminder with a link to the broadcast (address and location).

And then - the next day or during the week - we send a post-mailing with the materials. It, by the way, always shows good results in terms of opens - presentations are interesting, it's nice. After the events, you will have many potential readers, and only the quality of the newsletter will determine how long they will stay with you (and whether they will leave at all).

What else could be useful to keep in mind

Warming up and 'burning everything to the ground' are different things

Once the letters started to show results, you should not get carried away. Because of the excitement, you can fall in Open Rate. Even if it's a few percent, it will take a very long time to restore the previous figures.

Once is also not forgiven

If you get your hands on a suspicious base - abandon it and run. If you send out one e-mail even to a few hundred e-mail addresses, which will add you to spam, your deliverability will drop below a redline. A mailing service will simply stop trusting you.

More is not better...

Don't blindly increase your mailing frequency as soon as your rates go up. Closely monitor how your readers behave. Try new formats, quantities, and designs of your letters. Experimentation is everything. Because only in comparison will you understand what works best for all segments of your audience.

… But sometimes it's better.

Yes, yes, that's how it works. Every business has its own peculiarities. And what doesn't work for most may work for you. Maybe your readers look forward to your newsletter every month and genuinely don't understand why you haven't made it a weekly thing. Again, test and experiment. But also be sober about your strengths - it's better to make a good monthly newsletter and have subscribers waiting than to make a mediocre weekly one and have unsubscribed readers.

Wrap Up

There is no such thing as a perfect newsletter because the ideal is unattainable. But that doesn't mean it's not worth striving for. On the contrary - in no case should you stop self-improvement.

Analyze your weaknesses in performance and improve them. Try new formats and application development software, and note what new ones work best for your audience. Try to get better and learn from challenges. Of course, you won't reach the ideal in this way anyway, but you can get much closer to it than others.