Newsletter and COVID: hints and tips

How to create a useful newsletter in the era of Coronavirus

The Coronavirus emergency, which is now spreading globally, has taken everyone by surprise. We had to review so many aspects of our daily lives, which we took for granted, and reprogram everything in a different way.

And that's how our house turned into our office, for our yoga classes we don't go anymore to the sports center but we can stay in our bedroom, and all our social moments now go through the PC screen.

While what we are experiencing limits our movements, this can also be seen as an opportunity to rethink our activities.

First of all, what we can do is to take advantage of this digitized world, just as companies that have joined the network of "digital solidarity" are doing. In fact, a lot of them have made available to everyone, and for free, their online services: from platforms for viewing movies and TV series to museums and e-learning sites. Not to mention the remarkable success that video calling apps are experiencing: Zoom, for example, now enjoys a very strong popularity, which before the emergency did not have.

So let's get back to the point: how can we use digital in our favour? These are gonna be our main objectives: be inventive and equip ourselves with a tool to convey our ideas, our services.

Which one? Our advice is to use a very powerful medium such as email marketing and, in particular, newsletters.

If we want to communicate with our users in a simple, fast and low-cost way, the newsletter will certainly be the best medium.

But what techniques can we put in place so that our communication has the desired effects and it is not lost among the thousands of emails that invade the inboxes of our contacts? To answer to this question, we have prepared a 5-point guide on how to make a great newsletter in the era of COVID.

1) Create useful content

The biggest mistake you can make is to send a newsletter just because you want to follow what other companies do and then think that if others write something related to the COVID theme, we must necessarily do the same thing too. This is not a good choice. If we don't have anything interesting to say, no one will ever consider our email and we have just wasted time. We can give you a few advices. This applies to everyone, even and especially to those who, because of the interruption of many activities, cannot temporarily work.

Think about, for example, travel agencies, among the most disadvantaged sectors at the moment due to travel restrictions. Our suggestion in cases like these is to find ways to stay in contact with your customers. One useful idea could be to create video documentaries about the best places to visit at the end of the emergency; or you could write blog posts that recommend the best destinations to take into consideration during the second half of the year. In short, we must try to draw users' attention to our company and, above all, try to distinguish ourselves from our competitors by offering interesting content.

2) Make a newsletter that stands out!

Today there are many newsletter templates throughout the web. If we want to create something original and easy recognizable, we should start to craft a personalized one. How?

In Mail Marketing we offer you the opportunity to create your newsletter in its entirety, avoiding pre-established and unoriginal templates. Remember to switch between images and text, carefully choosing both of them: spend some time searching or creating an original, beautiful and impactful image.

3) Be concise

If it is true that there is no standard length for the newsletter and that it all depends on what you want to say, it is also true that if we are able to write a short text, our newsletter will be easy to read. We consider newsletters as the starting point, from which we lead users through our site. This brings us to the next advice:

4) Use links!

Don’t forget to include a clear and visible button in our newsletter, which refers to the content of our interest. For example, if you have an e-commerce and you want to communicate your latest offers, just write in the text of the newsletter the details of the promotion and - through a link - get users to the website in order to make a purchase. It would be better to create short texts, flanked by a clearly visible button, which will intrigue the reader and make him want to discover what we have to offer him.

5) Interact with your customers

Make the customer feel as if he is part of your world, perhaps asking to write a review of a specific product or inviting them to ask for advice on a service that your company offers. It is important to specify your email address and phone number in the info section, and also the links to your social media pages. This will help you to create a special relationship with the user, who will no longer see your company as just one of many, but as the only one that should be taken into consideration in case he or she needs that specific products.

In conclusion, you need to remember that, regardless of whether you are working or not during this period, your main goal must be to prevent customers from forgetting about you. So, if you have something to offer him immediately, take advantage of it and maybe also create a short-term promotion in order to get users to make an immediate purchase. If you are temporarily not working, just make the customer "dream" of your products, reminding him that sooner or later you will be back and will be there for him, as you used to do before the lockdown.