How to Generate and Test Newsletter Ideas and Topics That Boost Your Email Marketing
Jayrald Ado, Customer Service Specialist 🌅
Customer Service Specialist | Home & Property Insurance, Healthcare, Finance, Travel, e-commerce, Telco | L.I.O.N ☀️
Newsletters are a great way to connect with your audience, build trust, and drive conversions. But how do you come up with newsletter ideas and topics that your readers will love and look forward to?
In this blog post, we’ll share some tips and strategies on how to find and validate newsletter ideas and topics that will engage your audience and help you achieve your goals.
Why newsletter ideas and topics matter
Your newsletter is a reflection of your brand and your expertise. It’s also a way to communicate with your subscribers and provide them with value.
But if your newsletter is boring, irrelevant, or spammy, you’ll lose their attention and trust. You might even get unsubscribes or spam complaints.
That’s why you need to carefully plan your newsletter content and make sure it aligns with your audience’s needs, interests, and expectations.
Here are some benefits of having good newsletter ideas and topics:
1. You’ll attract more subscribers who are interested in what you have to say
2. You’ll increase your open rates, click-through rates, and conversions
3. You’ll build a loyal and engaged community around your brand
4. You’ll establish yourself as an authority and a thought leader in your industry
5. You’ll differentiate yourself from your competitors
How to find newsletter ideas and topics
Finding newsletter ideas and topics can be challenging, especially if you’re running out of inspiration or don’t know what your audience wants.
But don’t worry, there are plenty of ways to generate newsletter ideas and topics that will resonate with your readers. Here are some of them:
1. Uncover what your audience wants to read
The best way to find out what your audience wants to read is to ask them directly. You can use surveys, polls, feedback forms, or social media to get their input.
For example, you can ask them:
1. What are their biggest challenges or pain points?
2. What are their goals or aspirations?
3. What are they curious or passionate about?
4. What kind of content do they prefer (e.g., articles, videos, podcasts, etc.)?
5. How often do they want to hear from you?
You can also use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or email marketing software to analyze your website traffic, search queries, email performance, and subscriber behavior. This will help you understand what topics are popular, what keywords are driving traffic, what content is getting clicks and conversions, and what content is causing unsubscribes or spam reports.
2. Tap into on-trend insights
Another way to find newsletter ideas and topics is to stay on top of the latest trends, news, and developments in your industry. This will help you create timely and relevant content that will capture your audience’s attention and show that you’re up-to-date.
You can use tools like BuzzSumo1, Google Trends, or Twitter Trends to discover what topics are trending online. You can also follow industry blogs, podcasts, newsletters, magazines, or influencers to get insights and inspiration.
For example, if you’re in the online learning industry, you can use BuzzSumo to find out what topics are getting the most shares on social media:
You can then use these topics as a starting point for your own newsletter content.
3. Use the news
Another source of newsletter ideas and topics is the news. You can use current events, stories, or controversies as hooks for your newsletter content.
For example, you can:
1. Share your opinion or perspective on a relevant news story
2. Explain how a news story affects your industry or audience
3. Provide tips or advice on how to deal with a news-related issue or challenge
4. Share a success story or a case study related to a news story
5. Curate a list of the best news articles or resources on a topic
You can use tools like Google News, Feedly, or Flipboard to find news stories that are relevant to your industry or niche.
4. Discover an angle, and curate around it
Another way to find newsletter ideas and topics is to discover an angle or a theme that ties together different pieces of content. This will help you create a cohesive and engaging newsletter that has a clear purpose and message.
For example, you can:
1. Focus on a specific problem or solution that your audience faces
2. Share a personal story or experience that relates to your topic
3. Showcase a product or service that solves a specific problem or need
4. Highlight a customer testimonial or a success story
5. Teach something new or useful to your audience
6. Entertain your audience with humor, trivia, or fun facts
For example, you can create a newsletter around the theme of productivity, and curate content that helps your audience achieve more in less time.
5. Don’t forget the design
The design of your newsletter is not just about aesthetics. It’s also about readability, usability, and accessibility.
A good newsletter design should:
1. Match your brand identity and style
2. Use clear and consistent fonts, colors, and images
3. Tips Have a simple and intuitive layout and navigation
4. Use white space and headings to break up the text
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5. Be responsive and mobile-friendly
6. Include a clear and compelling call to action
You can use tools like Sendinblue, Wix, or Venngage to create beautiful and professional newsletter designs without coding.
How to validate newsletter ideas and topics
Finding newsletter ideas and topics is one thing. Validating them is another.
You don’t want to spend time and effort creating a newsletter that no one reads or cares about. You want to make sure that your newsletter ideas and topics are relevant, valuable, and engaging for your audience.
Here are some ways to validate your newsletter ideas and topics before you send them out:
1. Test your subject lines
Your subject line is the first thing that your subscribers see when they receive your newsletter. It’s also the main factor that determines whether they open it or not.
That’s why you need to test different subject lines and see which ones perform better in terms of open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
You can use tools like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer or SubjectLine.com to score your subject lines based on factors like word count, sentiment, urgency, power words, and more.
You can also use tools like Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor to run A/B tests on your subject lines and compare the results.
Here are some tips for writing effective subject lines:
1. Keep them short and catchy (no more than 10 words)
2. Use action verbs and power words (e.g., discover, learn, boost, etc.)
3. Include numbers or statistics (e.g., 5 ways to…, 10% off…, etc.)
4. Create curiosity or urgency (e.g., You won’t believe this…, Last chance to…, etc.)
5. Personalize them with the subscriber’s name or location (e.g., Hi John, Here’s something for you…, How to grow your business in Seattle…, etc.)
2. Ask for feedback
Another way to validate your newsletter ideas and topics is to ask for feedback from your subscribers. You can do this by:
1. Sending surveys or polls after each newsletter
2. Asking questions or inviting comments at the end of each newsletter
3. Encouraging replies or responses via email or social media
4. Creating a feedback form or a landing page on your website
You can use tools like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, or Google Forms to create surveys or polls that ask your subscribers about their preferences, opinions, suggestions, or complaints.
You can also use tools like Hotjar or UserTesting to collect feedback from website visitors who sign up for your newsletter.
The feedback you collect will help you understand what your subscribers like, dislike, want or need from your newsletter.
You can use this feedback to improve your newsletter content, design, frequency, and delivery.
3. Track your metrics
The final way to validate your newsletter ideas and topics is to track your metrics and analyze your performance.
You can use tools like Google Analytics, Mailchimp, or Campaign Monitor to measure and monitor various metrics related to your newsletter, such as:
Open rate: The percentage of subscribers who opened your newsletter
Click-through rate: The percentage of subscribers who clicked on a link in your newsletter
Conversion rate: The percentage of subscribers who took a desired action after clicking on a link in your newsletter (e.g., buying a product, signing up for a trial, downloading a resource, etc.)
Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of subscribers who opted out of your newsletter
Spam rate: The percentage of subscribers who marked your newsletter as spam
Bounce rate: The percentage of newsletters that failed to reach the subscriber’s inbox
These metrics will help you evaluate how well your newsletter ideas and topics are resonating with your audience and achieving your goals.
You can use this data to optimize your newsletter strategy and test different variables, such as:
1. Content type and format
2. Content length and frequency
3. Subject line and preview text
4. Design and layout
5. Call to action and landing page
Conclusion
Newsletters are a powerful way to connect with your audience and grow your business. But you need to have good newsletter ideas and topics that will attract, engage, and convert your subscribers.
In this blog post, we’ve shared some tips and strategies on how to find and validate newsletter ideas and topics that will work for you.
We hope you’ve found this post helpful and informative. If you want to learn more about email marketing and newsletter design, check out these resources:
And if you’re looking for a simple and effective way to create and send beautiful newsletters, try Beehiiv. Beehiiv is a newsletter platform that helps you create engaging newsletters in minutes. You can choose from hundreds of templates, customize them with your own content and branding, and send them to your subscribers with ease.
Beehiiv also helps you manage your email list, track your performance, and optimize your results. You can sign up for free today and start creating newsletters that will wow your audience.
Ready to take your newsletter game to the next level? Join Beehiiv today and get started!