Here's how to improve your DTC newsletter
The 10 commandments of good newsletter writing
Hi there,
What many people don’t know about Heights is it actually started as a newsletter.
Yup, the Sunday Supplement grew the email list that Heights was launched to.
So when I joined Heights as Head of Growth the history of the newsletter long exceeded that of the company.
So much time, love and effort went into that newsletter. It was this long love affair of brain care and nerdy science, with Dan one of the co-founders signing it off every week.
But it didn’t seem to be delivering much.
People would spend a year reading it… and not know we had a product.
Click-through-rates were low - were they just reading it and not clicking through? Or were the multitude of links lost in the myriad of scrolls it took to get through?
Back then I thought: shorter and easier click-throughs.
Now: having my own newsletter where I too easily write a long one without a key link, wondering the same as I did at Heights.
Is there anybody out there?
Hello?
Only to get on a near-weekly basis someone writing me a sweet kind message of how much they love it. I promptly screenshot it for my kind words file (it’s a good pick me up when I’m down) and remember that the key thing isn’t the length, but the value.
Yet, with how time-consuming newsletters are, I thought it was worth sharing a few practical tips (let’s call them newsletter commandments) to guide your own efforts.
Here are my ten:
Thou shall link to value, not just products (place of trust vs selling)
Thou shall make it super scannable (short paragraphs, subtitles, bullet points and bold)
Thou shall not try to address five topics (keep it focused)
Thou shall tell a story (a founder angle on topics is great)
Thou shall not go too broad (what do people see you as the expert in and for which audience)
Thou shall start a conversation (invite replies and responses vs being a one-way conversation)
Thou shall be consistent (yes you can test things and optimise but be consistent in terms of timing and content style)
Thou shall have a clear CTA (blogs are great for this, they get them on your site without being too salesy)
Thou shall spend time on your subject line (if people aren’t hooked the rest is a waste of time)
Thou shall segment and personalise (this may not be in the beginning, but as you grow it is well worth the effort)
Use these ten commandments as a checklist for your next newsletter.
Recommendation
I haven’t talked too much about design, not because it isn’t important, not because it's annoying, it depends. Some brands thrive with a visual design whilst others go plain text personal.
So instead I’ll leave you with the recommendation of the week to check out a variation of newsletter designs to get inspired to improve your own design.
This article has some useful tips for designing and formatting your newsletter that I think people often gloss over, such as ensuring the design is optimised for mobile.
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I hope you take the ten commandments to improve your newsletter. Newsletters are such a powerful way to build a relationship and deliver value to your customers. But done wrongly, they just result in a load of unsubscribes.
If you have any DTC brands (or you one) who you feel does newsletters well, let me know. Always love seeing more examples and if I have enough I’ll create a full breakdown article featuring those brands.
Till the next newsletter,
Daphne