Subscriber Exclusive
You’ve Got Mail: 7 Tips for Developing a Successful Brewery Newsletter
For the third and final installment in our You’ve Got Mail series, our own COO offers his best advice on building newsletters that attract and keep an audience of customers.
Just as you wouldn’t build your house on rented land, don’t build your audience on rented channels. Social channels offer a great opportunity for reaching an audience at scale, but the platform owners can modify them on a whim. Don’t leave your digital relationship with customers at the mercy of the mercurial leaders of the major social-media apps—email newsletters are an important owned channel for any brewery to engage with its audience.
An email newsletter keeps your brewery top of mind with your customers. It’s a way to stay in touch and let them know what’s going on, what new beers you’ve got coming out, and any specials or events you’re running.
But it’s not just about pushing your product. An email newsletter is also a great way to build relationships with your customers and create loyalty. You can use it to share stories about your brewery, about the people who make your beer, and about the brewing process.
Here are seven tips for building your brewery’s successful email newsletter.
Just as you wouldn’t build your house on rented land, don’t build your audience on rented channels. Social channels offer a great opportunity for reaching an audience at scale, but the platform owners can modify them on a whim. Don’t leave your digital relationship with customers at the mercy of the mercurial leaders of the major social-media apps—email newsletters are an important owned channel for any brewery to engage with its audience.
An email newsletter keeps your brewery top of mind with your customers. It’s a way to stay in touch and let them know what’s going on, what new beers you’ve got coming out, and any specials or events you’re running.
But it’s not just about pushing your product. An email newsletter is also a great way to build relationships with your customers and create loyalty. You can use it to share stories about your brewery, about the people who make your beer, and about the brewing process.
Here are seven tips for building your brewery’s successful email newsletter.
[PAYWALL]
1. Make It Easy for People to Sign Up
If you’re going through the effort of building an email newsletter, make sure you have an audience to build it for. You can do this by having a pop-up on your website, by collecting email addresses in your taproom, or by asking people to sign up when they follow you on social media.
2. What’s the Point of Your Email?
Think about what you want to achieve with each email you send. Are you trying to drive traffic to your website? Increase brand awareness? Boost direct sales? Before you build out the newsletter design, make sure you know why you’re building an email and what action you want the readers to take. And don’t be afraid to ask your readers what they want—a survey in a welcome email and an annual survey can go a long way.
In all communication, be authentic but give people a reason to read. If they don’t find value in the email, you’ll see the impact in the email open rate.
3. Make Your Email Accessible
Make sure people can consume your content easily. That means keeping the colors high contrast (e.g., a white background with black text) and using a font size that’s big enough to read without having to strain. It also means making sure the most important information is at the top and that you use images and headings to break up the text. And of course, be sure to proofread your work before hitting Send!
Think about how your readers will access your email. Many people check and read emails on their phones, so you’ll want to make sure the content is mobile friendly and flows easily when viewed in a smaller space.
4. Be Consistent
It’s important to set email-timing expectations. Let subscribers know when they can expect to hear from you and make sure to stick to that schedule.
5. Don’t Overcommit Yourself
When you’re starting out, keep your newsletter design and content simple. You can always add more complexity as you get more comfortable with the process, but if you try to do too much right off the bat, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed.
6. Dial In Technical Requirements and Tests
The technical side of sending emails can sometimes be a little overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few suggestions:
- Make sure the email system you select has good deliverability metrics (no sense in building an email no one can open).
- Keep the overall email size under one megabyte (MB), including images.
- Set up technical records in your DNS to authenticate your sends (to avoid spam filters and get into inboxes).
- A/B test when you have questions about your audience.
- Don’t spend too much when you start. You don’t need HubSpot or a full marketing suite.
7. Automate Where Possible
Try to make your life easier. Take the time to set up some automated emails to accomplish your goals. A welcome email is a great place to start. It will give you the opportunity to get a quick touch point when someone joins your email list as well as ask them what they want from you and the newsletter. From there, you can go in a lot of directions with automation (loyalty, review your brewery, re-buy, and more).
If you have any questions about tech, design, email systems, or other marketing, we’re always happy to help. Drop me a line anytime at [email protected].
