You’ve heard that email marketing is one of the best investments to make as a service provider. You quickly signed up for an email platform and in no time you had subscribers. Next, you created a newsletter and sent it out but then all you heard were crickets. You were not seeing the impact of your email marketing and now you feel bamboozled.
Don’t worry, you’re not the only service provider who feels this way. Here are 5 newsletter mistakes your service business makes and how to fix them.
1. You’re inconsistent
Sometimes brands may miss a newsletter or two, but if you promise a weekly newsletter and send one out once a month or every other month, you won’t get the results you want.
If you’re not sure how often to send out emails, join the club.
According to Campaign Monitor, “Sending emails two to three times per week seems to be the peak stat. Once per week and four to five times per week both showed associated data trailing off.”
However, if you can’t commit to once a week, don’t tell your audience that’s what you’re going to do.
Email marketing is all about relationship building and inconsistency is an obstacle to forging any worthwhile relationship.
The fix:
- Plan your newsletters. At Your Writing Bestie, we have planned newsletters for clients up to one year in advance. In your plan, include the date the newsletter will go out, the topic and notes about what you’ll include. We recommend choosing evergreen topics. Evergreen topics are always relevant to your audience.
- Pick a newsletter schedule that you or your team can stick to. If you can’t publish a newsletter weekly, try every two weeks or every month.
- Write and schedule the newsletters in advance to help you stay on schedule.
2. Your newsletter lacks valuable information
The primary reason your audience signed up for your newsletter is valuable insights.
Your newsletter is not where you focus on your business, it’s where you focus on your audience and how you can help them.
If your audience doesn’t find your newsletter valuable, they will stop opening it or unsubscribe.
You have to make sure you create a newsletter your audience will love.
The fix:
- Ask your audience what they want in the newsletter. You can either do this in person or via an online survey like Jotform or Google Forms.
- Find out what your competitors are including in their newsletters.
- Repurpose content your audience already loves into your newsletters.
3. You’re not holding your audience’s attention
Attention is as good as gold in the online space.
There are a ton of things vying for your audience’s attention, both online and offline, including other businesses in their inbox.
That’s why you have to find a way to hold your audience’s attention.
One way you can do that is by writing valuable emails but the way you present the information is just as important.
The fix:
- Use open loops to keep your audience reading. For example, you can pose a question or use one-sentence paragraphs.
- Use headings to break up your content. Big blocks of text are a no-no.
- Use storytelling techniques to keep your audience engaged.
4. You’re not paying attention to your analytics
Analytics provide important information that can help you reap the most out of your email marketing efforts.
Some analytics you should pay attention to are:
- Open rates
- Click through rates
- Unsubscribe rate
- Conversion rate
The fix:
- Regularly check your email analytics.
- Use the analytics to improve your email marketing. For example, if you have a low open rate, consider making more compelling subject lines or segmenting your list further.
- Purge unengaged subscribers from your list.
5. You’re not including a call to action
Many service providers send out emails without prompting the audience to take action.
Asking your audience to take an action can help you to generate leads, build trust and keep your audience engaged.
You may want them to:
- Contact you with their questions or concerns.
- Respond to your email
- Read your blog post
- Follow your social media accounts
- Book a service
- Complete a survey
The fix:
- Ask yourself this, “What do I want people to do after reading this newsletter?”
- Include a call to action in every newsletter.
- Avoid including too many call to actions.
Next Steps
A newsletter can be a great way to connect with your audience, generate leads for your business and keep your brand top of mind. However, service providers who are often wearing many hats may fall short with keeping up with email marketing.
If you want to continue doing your email marketing on your own, check out our newest e-book, How to Create a Newsletter Your Audience Will Love & You Can Make Money From. This book includes the BESTIE method for newsletter success.
However, if you’re ready to let a newsletter expert take the reigns, let us know! We’re looking forward to working with you, Bestie.
Your Writing Bestie 
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