Do you need help finding newsletter ideas to keep subscribers engaged?
Email marketing is a great way to share your brand’s message, connect with your customers, and turn leads into subscribers. But, it can be hard to keep coming up with fresh, exciting email content ideas for newsletter regularly.
Plus, after working hard to grow your email list, it can be disappointing and frustrating when your subscribers aren’t interacting with the email newsletters you are sending.
So, what to include in a newsletter? Don’t worry, as we’re here to help.
This article will share 29 newsletter ideas to keep subscribers engaged. With these newsletter topics and ideas, you can keep your newsletter content strategy exciting, and your subscribers will love seeing your new messages in their inboxes.
- What Is an Email Newsletter?
- Why Are Email Newsletters Important?
- How To Write a Newsletter That Performs?
- 29 Engaging Newsletter Ideas
But before we jump to our list of ideas for newsletters, let’s also uncover what an email newsletter is, its importance, and the best practices for writing one.
What Is an Email Newsletter?
A newsletter is an email, typically sent daily, weekly, or monthly, to your subscribers to inform them about the industry news, promotions, and latest updates related to our product or service. Newsletters help build relationships with subscribers by releasing engaging content to them.
Why Are Email Newsletters Important?
There are several reasons why email newsletters are so valuable:
1. Direct communication
Email newsletters allow businesses to communicate directly with their subscribers without the distractions and limitations of other marketing channels. This enables them to share news, promotions, and other updates with a receptive and interested audience and to build a loyal following of engaged subscribers.
2. Relationship building
By providing valuable information and keeping subscribers informed, email newsletters can help to build trust, establish authority, and strengthen relationships between business owners and their audience. This can increase loyalty, repeat business, and positive word-of-mouth marketing.
3. Brand awareness
Email newsletters provide a valuable opportunity to promote your brand and raise awareness of your products or services. You can encourage subscribers to engage with your brand and share your newsletter content with their networks by featuring new products, promotions, and other updates.
4. Data collection
Email newsletters provide an effective means of collecting valuable data about your subscribers, including their interests, preferences, and behavior. This information can be used to refine your marketing strategy, improve your products or services, and better understand your target audience.
Overall, email newsletters are a powerful tool for connecting with your target audience, building your brand, and achieving your marketing goals.
By providing valuable newsletter content, promoting engagement, and building lasting relationships with your subscribers, you can establish yourself as a trusted authority in your industry and achieve long-term success.
How To Write a Newsletter That Performs?
To write a newsletter that gets opened and read, there are several best practices you can follow:
- Define your audience: Know your target audience and write for them. Tailor your newsletter ideas to their interests and needs.
- Choose a catchy subject line: Your subject line should grab the attention of your subscribers and make them want to open your newsletter.
- Keep it short and sweet: Keep your newsletter short. Use short paragraphs, bullet points, and visuals to break up the text and make it easy to read.
- Provide valuable content: Offer your subscribers something of value, whether it’s news, insights, tips, or promotions. Make sure the newsletter content is relevant, engaging, and informative.
- Include a call-to-action: Encourage your subscribers to take action, whether visiting your website, making a purchase, or sharing your newsletter articles.
- Personalize your message: Use the recipient’s name, include personalized recommendations based on their interests, or tailor your newsletter content ideas to their location.
- Optimize for mobile devices: Make sure your newsletter is optimized for mobile devices, as over half of all emails are opened on mobile devices.
- A/B Test and analyze: Test different subject lines, layouts, and newsletter ideas to see what works best for your audience. Use data to analyze open and click-through rates and adjust as needed.
By following these best practices, you can write a newsletter that captures the attention of your subscribers, provides value, and encourages engagement.
29 Engaging Newsletter Ideas
We have divided our list of 29 newsletter ideas into six categories to make it easier for our readers to navigate and find the content that is most relevant to their interests.
By organizing our newsletter ideas into these categories, we can ensure that our newsletter delivers diverse content that appeals to our entire audience.
Helpful Newsletter Ideas
- How-To Guides
- Share Blog Posts
- Create Blog Post Roundups
- Share Your YouTube Videos
- Share Templates
- Share Infographics
The best way to keep your subscribers around is by sending them newsletters that help them solve problems.
Let’s take a look at some ideas for newsletter that will help you bring value to your subscribers and let you promote your helpful content at the same time.
1. How-To Guides
Offer your subscribers step-by-step instructions on how to use your product or how to get something done by creating newsletters with how-to guides.
For example, Design Files sent this step-by-step video tutorial to their subscribers:
Creating a detailed video tutorial isn’t necessary for all businesses though.
For instance, if you make handmade scarves, you can show your subscribers ten different ways to wear them with photos. Or, if you’re a writing coach, you can create a text-based list that includes tips to help your subscribers improve their writing skills.
With how-to guides and tutorials, you can solve the biggest pain points of your target audience and easily demonstrate the value of your product/service.
2. Share Blog Posts
Want to get a lot of eyes on your latest blog post? Attaching them to your newsletter is a great email content idea.
Instead of waiting for your audience to check out your newest post, you can get them excited and drive traffic to your site by sharing it in a newsletter, as the blog Easy Cheesy Vegetarian does below:
Remember to encourage your subscribers to share the post on social media and make it easy for them by including share buttons in your newsletter.
3. Create Blog Post Roundups
Aside from sharing your latest blog posts one at a time, you can also create blog post roundups.
A blog post roundup offers your readers several of your company’s best blog posts. For example, you can create a blog post roundup of your most popular blog posts or pull together a best-of-the-best roundup of blogs on a particular topic.
This is the perfect way to introduce your new subscribers to some of your older blog posts.
4. Share Your YouTube Videos
Do you have a YouTube channel for your business? If you do, start sharing your YouTube videos in your newsletter.
Videos are super engaging. In fact, including a video in an email can lead to open rate increases of 6%!
It’s important to remember that your YouTube video will not necessarily play right inside an email. Email clients like Gmail, Outlook, and others don’t have the technical requirements to make that happen.
So, it’s best to add a static image of your YouTube video with a “play button” over the top and link the image to your video hosted on YouTube. That way, when subscribers click the play button on the image, it will open up the video on YouTube.
Here’s how Patagonia does it:
An obvious added bonus of sharing your videos with your newsletter subscribers is that it will help you get more YouTube subscribers and more views!
5. Share Templates
Offer your subscribers downloadable templates to help them with personal or professional tasks.
Whether it’s a planning calendar, a budget sheet, a workout plan, or a design template, providing something of tangible value can significantly boost engagement.
6. Share Infographics
Share visually appealing infographics that break complex information into easily digestible visual content.
Infographics can be about industry trends, how-to guides, statistical data, or any topic that your subscribers might find interesting.
Promotional Newsletter Ideas
- New Product Announcements
- Coupons and Promotions
- Gift Guides
- Refer-a-Friend Program
- Case Studies and Testimonials
- Show Off User-Generated Content
According to MarketingSherpa, about 60% of consumers subscribe to a brand’s list to get promotional messages. So, there’s nothing wrong with sending promotional emails to your subscribers occasionally.
Let’s dive into some promotional newsletter ideas that will generate sales
7. New Product Announcements
Before releasing a new product, you must excite your audience. One way to do that is by sending them a new product announcement newsletter.
In the newsletter, you can inform your audience about your new product and what day it’s being released.
A newsletter announcing your new product will create a buzz, and your subscribers will line up on launch day to purchase it.
8. Coupons and Promotions
Everyone loves a good deal, so your subscribers are sure to enjoy getting emails from you that contain awesome coupons and promotions.
To increase conversions, create urgency with limited-time offers. For example, take a look at this eye-catching 8-hour sale email from Virgin Airlines:
A limited-time offer like this will create a sense of urgency and have your customers rushing to the checkout.
You can increase urgency by adding a countdown timer to your newsletter to show the minutes ticking by.
Pair that with an OptinMonster sales countdown timer popup on your website, and your sales will skyrocket.
9. Gift Guides
For eCommerce businesses, gift guides are an excellent newsletter idea to promote your products and generate more sales around the holidays.
Plus, they help your customers finish their holiday shopping quickly and easily.
You don’t have to wait until Christmas to create a gift guide.
You can create gift guides for any occasion; Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Back-to-School, and so on.
10. Refer-a-Friend Program
Creating a refer-a-friend is another great newsletter idea, asking loyal subscribers to recommend your business to their family and friends.
You can have your subscribers forward the email to their contacts. Then, if someone signs up for your email list, you can reward the original subscriber with a special discount.
This is a great way to grow your email list and introduce your business to new, potential customers.
11. Case Studies and Testimonials
Case studies and testimonials act as social proof for your business. When a subscriber reads about a success story from one of your happy customers, it encourages them to become a customer too.
Social proof statistics show that 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer, and 70% will trust a recommendation from someone they don’t even know.
So, craft newsletters to show off your business’ case studies, testimonials, and reviews like Eight Sleep does below:
12. Show Off User-Generated Content
Another effective form of social proof is user-generated content. User-generated content is any content, like images or videos, created by users and shared on online platforms like social media.
Businesses typically repost user-generated content on their social media feeds, but they can also serve as an excellent newsletter idea.
Here’s how Glossier did it:
Creating a newsletter to showcase user-generated content will show your subscribers how many loyal fans your business has and will help you boost sales too.
Newsletters Ideas For Events
- Event Invitations
- Event Recaps
- Webinars
Do you have an upcoming event you want to promote? Send a newsletter!
Take a look at these awesome newsletter ideas for events.
13. Event Invitations
Everyone loves getting a personal invitation to an exciting event.
So, if your business is holding an event for your customers and subscribers, send them an email invite.
Check out this gorgeous email invitation for a Loeffler Randall X Jenni Kayne pop-up shop:
Sending an email invite is a great way to remind subscribers about upcoming events and get a lot of attendees.
14. Event Recaps
You can also create event recap newsletters. Event recap newsletters let subscribers who couldn’t attend the event find out what happened: what was talked about, who attended, how much money was raised, and even what was on the menu.
This helps everyone feel included even though they couldn’t be there.
But event recaps can also help inspire FOMO (the fear of missing out) in your subscribers. When your newsletter subscribers see what they missed out on, they’ll be sure to RSVP for the next event.
15. Webinars
Webinar marketing is an effective lead generation strategy. With a webinar, you can provide free, valuable information to your target audience and turn them into email subscribers and, eventually, customers.
To promote your upcoming webinar, send an email about it to your newsletter subscribers.
Like in this webinar email from Mintel, be sure to provide the date and time of your webinar, details about what attendees can learn, and a link where they can register.
Business Newsletter Ideas
- Share Your Company Story
- Behind-The-Scenes Tour
- Employee of the Month
- Job Postings
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Industry News
- Interview an Expert
Use your newsletters to keep your audience up-to-date with what’s going on in your business.
Check out these business information newsletter ideas you can send subscribers to educate them about your business and brand.
16. Share Your Company Story
To connect with your audience and let them get to know the person behind the brand, share your company story.
This email newsletter example from CharityWater.org tells how their non-profit organization started with a little idea among friends and how it grew into what it is today.
A personal, relatable story like this helps readers connect to the organization more meaningfully.
This newsletter idea doesn’t only work for non-profits. You can share the story of how your business started and why you do what you do to connect with your subscribers.
When your subscribers get to know the person behind the brand, they’ll be more invested in the emails you send them.
17. Behind-The-Scenes Tour
Make your newsletter subscribers and your customers feel like VIPs by giving them a glimpse behind-the-scenes of your company.
Lush is famous for taking their audience behind the scenes of their company. In their behind-the-scenes videos, people can see exactly how their bath bombs, soaps, and body washes are made.
If you don’t create a product, your business can give your subscribers a tour of your office space or take them behind the scenes of a photo shoot.
18. Employee of the Month
Let your newsletter subscribers get to know the incredible people working at your company by sending an “Employee of the Month” email.
With your employee of the month, you can include a photo of the employee, their name, job title, and a brief description of them, what they do, and what makes them so great.
When your subscribers feel connected to your and your employees, it increases brand loyalty.
19. Job Postings
Is your business hiring? Let your newsletter subscribers know!
Here’s how the Pemberton & District Public Library lets its audience know they’re hiring:
You never know if one of your loyal subscribers could become your newest employee. Or, they could pass the opportunity along to one of their talented family members or friends.
20. Frequently Asked Questions
You can also use your newsletter to answer frequently asked questions (FAQs). This is an easy way to help your subscribers learn more about your business.
Not sure what FAQs to answer?
Ask your customer support or sales team which questions they receive the most. That way, you can make sure your newsletter’s FAQs are relevant to your readers.
21. Industry News
Instead of only sharing news about your company in your newsletter, consider sharing news about your industry.
This won’t work for every business. For instance, if you own a pizza restaurant, your customers likely won’t be interested in hearing the news about the restaurant industry.
But, if your company is a B2B (business-to-business) digital marketing agency, your subscribers will be interested in digital marketing news. So, you can share the latest industry trends or news with them to keep them informed and up-to-date.
22. Interview an Expert
Another way to create an interesting newsletter for your subscribers is by interviewing an expert.
You can interview an important industry figure or someone on your company’s team.
You can also interview people your subscribers will relate to, like their peers. For example, Interface Lover, a magazine for creative professionals, regularly interviews designers that their readers can be inspired by.
To get the most engagement, provide a video of the interview in your newsletter and a link to a blog post with the full transcript.
Interactive Newsletter Ideas
- Ask for Feedback
- Run a Giveaway
- Quizzes
Have you ever heard of interactive content? Interactive content refers to content that lets the audience actively participate. So, users can click around and perform actions instead of passively reading or watching.
Here are some interactive newsletter content ideas you can use.
23. Ask for Feedback
People love sharing their thoughts and opinions. And interactive content like a poll or a survey does wonders for boosting engagement.
So, to keep subscribers engaged, ask them for their feedback with a survey!
Here’s how Lyft does it:
This triggered email asks customers to provide Lyft with feedback about the ride they’ve just taken.
Sending a triggered email survey right after a customer’s experience with your company is an effective way to gather feedback because the experience is fresh in the customer’s mind, making them more likely to take a few minutes to answer some questions.
Aside from triggered email surveys, you can also send out a survey periodically to get your customers’ opinions on your product or service.
You can easily create a survey using a tool like WPForms.
With WPForm’s drag-and-drop form builder, you can create a survey that fits your needs in minutes and embed it on a page, in a post, or to any part of your WordPress website.
Then, send an email to your subscribers asking them for their feedback and include a link to the survey.
Asking your subscribers for feedback is a great way to keep them engaged, but you can also gather valuable insights that will help you grow your business and keep your customers happy.
24. Run a Giveaway
Running a giveaway is another awesome way to keep subscribers engaged. Giveaways also help you drive more traffic to your site, grow your social media following, increase brand awareness, and more.
Giveaways work so well because, let’s face it, who doesn’t love winning a fabulous prize?
At OptinMonster, we recently ran a giveaway for a Macbook Pro that received over 60,000 entries!
Here’s the giveaway email we sent out:
When readers clicked on the green call-to-action in the email, they were sent to a distraction-free giveaway landing page we could easily create with the best WordPress giveaway and contest plugin, RafflePress.
Plus, using RafflePress, you can offer extra entries to users for completing bonus actions.
To enter your contest, you can ask your subscribers to follow you on Twitter or Pinterest, watch a YouTube video, share one of your Facebook posts, or visit a particular page on your website, all of which will help you keep your subscribers engaged.
25. Quizzes
Quizzes are super fun, and people love them. Just look at the success of the Buzzfeed website. Their silly quizzes, like “Build a sandwich, and we’ll tell you how old you are,” get a ton of engagement online.
Email content ideas of a newsletter with a quiz in it can get a similar amount of engagement.
But for the best results, instead of creating a silly Buzzfeed-esque quiz, create a quiz for your subscribers that’s relevant to them and your business.
Fun Newsletter Ideas
- Holiday Greetings
- Share Your Recommendations
- Inspirational Quotes
- Pet Pictures
Lastly, having a little fun with your email newsletters is important. So, let’s look at some “just for fun” ideas for newsletter.
26. Holiday Greetings
Bring your newsletter subscribers joy by sending them holiday greetings. A simple holiday greeting from your business will let your subscribers know you’re thinking of them on a special day.
For example, check out this email from Nordstrom, wishing their subscribers a Happy Thanksgiving.
Also, notice how they use a fun animation to let subscribers know that they’ll decorate their website for the holiday, which helps Nordstrom drive more traffic.
And remember, you don’t have to wait until a major holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas rolls around to send a cheerful greeting.
There are a ton of other fun marketing holidays you can whoop it up with your subscribers over, like:
- Science Fiction Day (January 2nd)
- National Pizza Day (February 9th)
- International Women’s Day (March 8th)
- National Best Friends Day (June 8th)
- And Many More
27. Share Your Recommendations
If you’ve recently listened to a great podcast, read a good book, or watched an awesome movie, share it with your subscribers!
Your subscribers will love learning about your interests and get some awesome new recommendations they can check out.
Aside from fun stuff like movies and TV shows, you can also recommend useful resources or tools to your audience. For instance, if you have a blog that helps others grow their blogs, you can recommend a cool WordPress plugin or content calendar tool you’ve been using.
28. Inspirational Quotes
When you find an inspirational quote meaningful to you, it can also be meaningful to your subscriber, hence an excellent newsletter idea.
Inspirational quotes will add more interest to your company newsletters, give your subscribers something to think about, give them something to relate to, and they can even help motivate them to reach their goals.
29. Pet Pictures
Talk about the safest newsletter idea. Everyone loves cute pet pictures, so why not share photos of your or employees’ pets in your email newsletter?
Here’s how Carhartt does it:
Sharing photos of adorable animals is a great way to skyrocket engagement, proven by the fact that animal photos are super popular on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook.
That’s a wrap!
With these 29 newsletter ideas to keep subscribers engaged, your newsletter content strategy won’t bore your subscribers. Instead, they’ll always be interested in your messages and eagerly awaiting your next email!
Need more subscribers to send all of your engaging content to? OptinMonster is hands down the best tool you can use to create beautiful lead capture forms and grow your email list.
Get started with OptinMonster today.
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