Thanksgiving with the family is always an interesting proposition. We all love our families (no seriously). But we don’t necessarily always get along or choose to spend ALL our time together. But we always come home for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving becomes a consistent touch point. A reason to reach out, catch up, say hello, and consume too many calories together. A reason to keep in touch.
Email newsletters are not always sexy. But they CAN be an amazing touch point between a brand and it’s community. A consistent reason to stay in touch. Keeping your business top of mind. Maintaining value and investment on both sides of the relationship. As a company focused on publishing content, this is even more true. And every company today should be publishing content.
10 weeks ago, Social Fresh launched our first email newsletter, the Social Fresh 7. It provides links and summaries for 7 weekly articles not from SocialFresh.com but still covering our beat, social media education for marketers. And while we are not sure on how many calories we are dishing out, we have learned a few things about how YOU interact with our weekly sustenance.
People Like Personality
Typically, when we see folks sharing or commenting on the newsletter on Facebook and Twitter, it is the fun and light stuff that dominates your reactions. While the newsletter and it’s links inevitably get shared, it is clear that the casual personality in the newsletter is well received.People Like To Be Told What To Do
Our descriptions of articles we link to are usually descriptive and fun. But occasionally we will literally suggest you “click the link” or “go read it now” in an effort to emphasize a certain insight. When we do this, the click throughs on that article are usually the highest in the newsletter and about 50% higher on average.Links Compete For Clicks
In the intro of each newsletter, we like to mention a few news stories or recent Social Fresh happenings. Sometimes we include one link, sometimes 5. The fewer the links in this section, the more likely it is clicked on. Including one link compared to five, can double the amount of click throughs we get in that section.No One Reads All 7 Articles
7 links a week seems like a nice round number and allows us to really dive into numerous topics each week. But, people do not click through on all of them. Which makes sense. We theorize a few reasons:- Lack of time. Reading 7 full articles from one source is time consuming. Consider that most of our readers are liking getting our newsletter at work, we do not expect them to dive deep into every insight.
- Lack of Relevance. Maybe you do not use Youtube much for your business and maybe you hate WordPress. So every article we link to on those topics, might not be your bag. Fair enough.
- Lack of Interest. We would like to think our headlines and summaries are nice and interesting, but obviously not everything we send you is going to seem that earth shattering to you.