Create Your First Newsletter with Free Templates – Email Marketing for Beginners Part 2

CleverReach

Ready to create your first newsletter? You've come to the right place! CleverReach makes it easy and fun. Let's get started!

In the first part of our email marketing series, we explained how to collect email addresses. You’ve got to get email addresses and consent to the newsletter before you can get started with newsletter marketing. Now you can get started with your first email newsletter. Our professional email marketing software makes it simple for you to create and design newsletters in no time. Don’t let the word “professional” put you off. Our software is designed specifically for email marketing, so it’s really straightforward and easy to use. This makes it perfect for beginners and anyone who prefers simple, efficient solutions. Watch our video to learn about our newsletter editor in 60 seconds

Step 1: What Type of Email Do You Want to Create?

You’re new at CleverReach and want to create your newsletter with our email marketing tool for the very first time? Log into your account and navigate to the menu item Email and click on Create New Email. First, decide what type of newsletter you want to create. You can choose between:

One-time newsletter
Automation email for follow-ups and multi-level automation workflows

Good to know: This first step is important. You can only select emails you’ve created as automations later.

Step 2: Define Campaign Settings

The second step is to define the settings for your newsletter campaign:

Select Recipient List

Generally, you have one single list containing all of your recipients. If you just want to focus on specific parts of your recipients, you can segment them based on certain criteria.

Tip: You can only filter by criteria you have for your users. Once you’ve selected the recipient list, you’ll see all the segments you’ve created to send your newsletter. Just click on the one you want.

Think of a Subject Line

The email subject line is important – it’s the door opener for your email. Make sure you put some thought into your subject line. It should be engaging, interesting, and a good fit for your target audience. Your subject line is the first thing people see in your newsletter. If it makes them curious, they’ll open it more often. Which newsletter would you rather open?

“Newsletter 2024/01“
“5 Tips for Skyrocketing Subject Lines! 🚀“

The best tips for a successful subject line:

short, max. 20-40 characters
explain advantages/ benefits
Make recipients curious
stick to spam guidelines

Good to know: See our PUSH magazine for more tips and ideas.

You can also come up with two different subject lines and run an A/B test to see which one your recipients like better. The winning version is the one with the highest opening rate after a defined number of days. Test a longer version against a shorter one or a neutral one against a personalized salutation. Once you’ve got the winning version, just send it out to the rest of your subscribers.

Good to know: Can’t think of anything brilliant off the top of your head? Just enter the second-best subject line and optimize it later. Once you’ve created the newsletter content, it’ll be easier to come up with a great subject line. You can also ask our AI for help. Click the robot to open a chat window where you can give the AI info about your newsletter. Based on your input, it’ll then suggest text for your subject line.

Write Preheader

A preheader is a short text displayed after the subject of an email if the email program supports it. The preheader is a summary of the email. Use no more than 150 characters.

Define Sender

The right sender helps get your message noticed. A personal sender name with the company name, like “Andrea Jung from CleverReach,” works well. Enter the sender email address for your newsletter. This should match the displayed sender name.

Define Advanced Campaign Settings

Need to define some additional settings? Switch from Basic Settings to Advanced Settings. You can adjust the following info in the advanced settings:

Campaign name: Name your campaign. You’ll find the campaign in the newsletter reporting section. It’s a good idea to choose a name that you can easily find again later, like if you want to run last year’s Christmas or summer campaign again.
Category:Categories are a great way to sort and organize your newsletters. If you save info like the sender or the sender address in a category, it’ll be the default when you create a new email.
Unsubscribe form:Recipients can unsubscribe from the newsletter themselves using an unsubscribe form. An unsubscribe link is mandatory in every GDPR-compliant newsletter. The standard unsubscribe form is linked in the CleverReach templates. Alternatively, you can select or add an individual unsubscribe form.
Tracking: For instance, you can set up your tracking settings to assign tags to recipients when they open your newsletter. If you want to track conversions in more detail, you can use tools like Google Analytics.

Step 3: Select Your Newsletter Template

CleverReach has a great selection of free, responsive email templates for you to choose from. Just choose the template that’s right for your event from the template catalog. You can customize and make our templates your own by adding or removing different content elements. You can add more images, text, or buttons, for example. Just use our drag-and-drop editor (see next step) to turn our template into your very own newsletter.

If you’ve already got a template from somewhere else or made your own, just upload it to CleverReach using the Upload Template button, convert it and you can use it in our Newsletter Editor.

Our drag-and-drop editor is based on the WYSIWYG principle, which basically means: “What you see is what you get.” That means you can see your newsletter on the screen just like it’ll be sent, and you don’t need to know any programming.

At first, you’ll just see your chosen template in the editor, with no content or placeholders. Just replace the images with your own and add any text you want to the template. You can also add additional elements to the templates:

Headlines and text blocks
Images
Buttons
Spacing
Columns
Products
Social Media channels

Drag elements into the newsletter to place them where you want. Then edit them as needed.

You can customize the colors, font, and font size for the whole newsletter or just specific parts of it in the design area.

Tip: You can manage your brand design centrally in your account settings and access it easily in the editor. Simply enter the URL and your logo and company colours will be ready in a design template. This makes brand-compliant communication even more efficient.

You can use the preview to switch between the desktop and smartphone view whenever you want. This way, you can see how your newsletter looks on each device.

And just like that, your first newsletter is ready to go!

Tips for Your Newsletter:

It’s important to make sure the content is clearly structured. This means organizing longer texts with highlighting, subheadings, and bullet points.
Use images to break down the content and make it easier to understand.
Make sure you include some easy-to-spot call-to-action buttons somewhere prominent.

Not sure what’s important when writing your newsletter? We’ve also put together some tips for you in our article, “Writing Newsletters.” Learn how to inspire your readers with convincing newsletter texts.

Step 5: Campaign Checklist

Your first newsletter is ready to go! Just send it to your recipients. Our campaign checklist is a quick and easy way to make sure you’ve covered all the important points. Before you send it, there’s just one last thing you can do:

make sure you’ve selected the right recipient list and/ or segment.
think about your subject line for one last time and edit it if needed.
check whether you have added the right sender.
send a preview email to yourself or your team members for a final newsletter check in your inbox.
schedule your email.

Could it possibly get any better? Maybe so! We’ll show you how to make your newsletter even better in the next part.

Check out the other email marketing for beginners episodes:

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