How To Start A Newsletter Guide
At Exhale, we try to steer away from offering black-and-white advice when it comes to creativity. We’re all on different creative journeys, and no two pathways look exactly the same. With that in mind—we’re not going to tell you that you need a newsletter. But, here are a few reasons why starting a newsletter might be a good idea for you:
You own your email list.
Social media is “rented space”. You are dependent on how those platforms work, and if they suddenly change their algorithm (hi, Instagram), or go away all together, you would lose access to those followers. With your email list, however, you own the list. If people have chosen to receive emails from you, you can communicate with them even if you switch email marketing services.
Email subscribers are your true fans.
If someone has willingly given you access to their inbox, they have a level of “buy in” to whatever you have to offer that is far beyond your social media following. If you are ever looking to sell a product, book, services, or anything else, email subscribers are significantly more likely to click “purchase.”*
Email can be a powerful way to get to know your target audience and serve them well.
While growing an email list is important for marketing purposes, publishing, growing your business, etc.—even more than that, it’s a great way to serve your audience.
*If you are a writer hoping to traditionally publish someday, specifically in nonfiction genres, the number of subscribers on your email list is one of the biggest areas agents and editors will look at when evaluating the strength of your platform.
What’s the difference between a newsletter and an email list? Your email list is all the people who have agreed to receive email communications from you. A newsletter is one way to serve them with content. It’s what we’re addressing here, but it’s not the only way to communicate with your audience, so get creative and feel free to think outside the box!
Our Quick-Start Newsletter Guide
Knowing your Why—and also your Who:
Why do you want to connect with readers via email? Why do you want to create a newsletter specifically? What is your end goal? Keep in mind who your target audience is. What do they need? What are they struggling with? How can you help them? Take a minute to write this down.
Many of my readers feel/want/struggle with/need ___________________.
I want my newsletter to ____________, ________________, and _______________.
I want my readers to feel _________________ after reading my newsletter.
Choosing a platform
Which email marketing service is the best? The one that meets your specific needs.
What is the most important factor for you? Cost? Style? Easy-to-use interface? Most email services offer similar features, but there are some key differences across the board. Here are some of the most popular email platforms, and our take on them. Keep in mind that email marketing services often change their pricing structure and offerings, so be sure to do your own research before you make a decision.
Pros: Free up until 2000 subscribers, allows for automated RSS emails, has some design features and templates (but not as good as other services).
Cons: Clunky interface, not user-friendly or intuitive for the average person, design styles are lacking, confusing pricing model that fluctuates as your list grows and can get very expensive if you need more features or if your list grows.
Pros: Intuitive interface, beautiful and modern designs, cool automation flows, new features being released regularly, the price you pay is the price you pay forever. You get unlimited subscribers and the ability to send unlimited emails.
Cons: Expensive (but get 50% off with Sarah’s code, SARAHHAUSER, or use this link!), users cannot unsubscribe from one list (so if they unsubscribe, they unsubscribe from everything you offer–we’re hoping Flodesk changes this soon!), currently no ability to send RSS emails, although we’ve heard they’re working on that. It’s a newer service, so there are some quirks and glitches, although we’ve found fewer and fewer of those as Flodesk gets better.
Pros: Nice to keep everything “in house” if you have a Squarespace website or blog, affordable, nice looking templates, user-friendly, easy to embed sign-up forms, can be a great option if you send a few emails to a large group of people.
Cons: There’s no free version (although you get a few free “trial” emails you can send). They limit the number of emails you can send per month. Even if you have a relatively small list but send quite a few emails, Squarespace can be less cost-effective. You also need an active Squarespace website to send Squarespace emails, so if you’re on WordPress or something else, you can’t use Squarespace for email.
Pros: A very popular option many creatives use for good reason. Good deliverability, lots of bells and whistles when it comes to segmenting your list, creating automations, or having multiple lead magnets. There are also great “how-to” resources put out by ConvertKit including webinars, a Facebook group, customer support, etc.
Cons: It is not made to create beautiful emails like you can with other services (plain text emails have higher open rates, so ConvertKit is fine with the fact that their emails aren’t as pretty). If you’re looking to create beautiful newsletter emails, this probably isn’t the best option. But if you want to be able to segment your audience, set up automations, easily create multiple opt-ins, etc, ConvertKit is an extremely powerful tool. Pricing is higher than other options and gets more expensive as your list grows.
Note: our list above is not exhaustive. Those are simply the platforms we’ve personally tried or researched in depth. Here are other options you may want to look into depending on your needs:
Substack (view our GNI recording about Substack here!)
Mailerlite
SendinBlue
Drip
Constant Contact
Mad Mimi
Keep in mind many of these services offer free trials, so you can check them out more in depth before committing. Google is also your friend, here, so if you’re an Enneagram 5 and need to do all the research, you can find all kinds of blog posts with pros and cons about various email marketing services.
Tip: Overwhelmed by what to choose? Don’t worry! You can always change email service providers! Even if you move from one to the other, you get to take the names on your list with you. Often, as you grow in your own creative work, you’ll find that you’ll need to change based on your needs, desires, and budget. Coffee + Crumbs started with Mailchimp, moved to Squarespace for a while, then Flodesk, and is now happily at Substack.
Not sure what terms like segmentation or landing page mean? Here’s a glossary of email marketing terms.
Creating the structure and writing the content:
Will your newsletter have a name? A theme? Think through the different sections you might want to include. Will you link to other content? Provide book recommendations? While you’re never married to one set newsletter design, consistency gives your readers something to expect and look forward to. As you consider segments for your newsletter, ask yourself: is this a segment I will want to create each quarter, month, week, etc?
What are some newsletters you love to read? What is it about them you love so much? The writing? The segments? The gifs? Take note of what you like and don’t like about the newsletters you currently subscribe to. It might also be helpful to subscribe to a few more newsletters from people in your genre/industry. Are you a photographer? Sign up for other photographers’ lists and see what they’re doing. Don’t copy, of course, but sometimes it can be helpful to see how others are serving their lists as you think about how to serve yours.
One of the best parts of making a newsletter is that you have a lot of freedom to play around with your writing voice. Take advantage of this freedom!
Tip: When deciding how often to send your newsletter, be sure to clearly communicate that to your audience. Don’t tell them you’re going to email them weekly, and then send an email once a quarter. Even worse ... don’t tell your audience you’ll email them monthly and then send them weekly emails!
We know the realities of creating in the midst of motherhood, so while many people say “be consistent” with your newsletter, we also know life happens. We encourage you to do your best, and simply be transparent with your communication. Ashlee sends out a monthly newsletter on a different day every month, but her readers know they’ll hear from her monthly. Sarah (usually) sends hers out the last Saturday of the month, every month, and has committed to a particular day. Do what works for you, but just be honest with your audience in the process.
Tip: Even if you are selling a product, book, or anything else, keep in mind that your goal should be to serve, serve, serve, serve, and then sell. Don’t sell in every email. Make each communication educational, inspiring, encouraging, or entertaining for your audience.
Promoting your Newsletter
Once you’ve created your first newsletter, you need to tell people about it! Put your sign-up link somewhere prevalent on your website or social media profiles. Here are a few ideas:
Make sure it’s clear on your website how people can sign up for your list.
You may also want to consider creating a “lead magnet” or free gift as an incentive for people to sign up. This is simply something you give your audience for free in exchange for their email address, and we may sound like a broken record here, but it should serve your audience. Provide something that entertains, inspires, solves a problem, encourages. This could be anything from a coupon code for 15% off to a free course to a printable or anything else. The sky’s the limit, and you may need to simply try a few things and see what seems to work best.
Put your sign up link in all your social media bios
Create a landing page with a sign up form and share on Pinterest.
Collaborate with other creatives. We love doing this, and you can encourage your audience to sign up for others’ lists, and they can share about your newsletter, too. Find creative ways to work together and promote each other.
Put a link to subscribe in the bio of any guest essays you write or anywhere else people can find you (podcast show notes, your email signature, etc.). People will not know about your newsletter unless you tell them, and if you are truly trying to serve people, don’t feel weird about telling them.
Tip: Your subject line is one of the most important parts of your newsletter. It has to be engaging enough that readers want to open your email, but you also don’t want it to be annoying and click-baity. Also, you want to avoid certain words that could cause your email to end up in a spam folder. Click here for a list of spam trigger words.
Ongoing marketing:
Just because you told people about your newsletter when you launched doesn’t mean you don’t need to tell them again. Research shows the average person needs to hear something seven times before taking action. Don’t be afraid to remind your audience when you’ve got a new edition of your newsletter going out, and gently nudge them to sign up.
You can also continually create new and different lead magnets (free printables, drip campaigns, digital offerings, etc), which is a great way to serve your audience and grow your list. Over time, you’ll learn what your audience responds to and what they need, and then you’ll get better and better at serving them—and growing your list in the process.
Speaking of inspiration, check out all of the newsletters that our Exhale members have created here. Sign up for a few or all of them!
Written by Sarah Hauser + Ashlee Gadd.
