Create your newsletter in 5 steps, it's easy!

That's it, you've decided to get started! You want to write your first newsletter, but how to do it? Here are 5 steps to follow to create your HTML newsletter easily and quickly.

1 - Determine your goals and your planning

What do you want to achieve by sending newsletters? You could for example decide to send a newsletter every month with your promotions, your new products ... You can also decide to set up a series of emails that will be sent automatically to all your new customers, or to all your new ones prospects.

Several options are possible, that’s why you must first think about what you want to do.

• Improve the conversion of prospects into customers by improving the version of contacts collected by email via a series of conversion emails
• Improve the control of your products and services by your customers via a series of emails for new customers
• One-time emails for key events (birthdays ...)
• ...

The emailing can be regular:

• Monthly or quarterly newsletter
• Technical Newsletter by Products
• ...

For regular emailings, you just have to get in the habit of sending your newsletter.

Think about creating an editorial board!

It is therefore advisable to define a schedule with the different emailing’s that you will send, with a frequency of sending (ex: every 1st Thursday of the month). You can create an editorial board with two or three colleagues, then schedule alerts in your calendar: the first one a week before, to ask your colleagues what they want to put in the newsletter, a second for the replay of the newsletter, and the third and last one for sending.

2 - Create the template (s) of your Newsletter

Your newsletter template can simply be a basic template delivered by your emailing solution (in which your logo, main colors and some specific images can be added) or be a custom template delivered by your graphic designer or your web agency.

Generally, just make 1 template that serves as the basis for each shipment.

Your HTML newsletter should not exceed 600 pixels wide, to make sure your readers do not have to use the horizontal scrollbar to read it.

Choose your images, but be careful, do not make a newsletter just in pictures, it takes at least 50% of text!

To display an image in an HTML Newsletter, it must be located on your website or on the emailing solution.

If you have a website, just add the image in your media library (WordPress ...), so you will have the link to go to the image in your newsletter.

3 - Structure your emailing

Do not dive your head down in writing your newsletter.

It is recommended to use a "brief" summarizing all the information to be collected.

• The target of the shipment
• The date of dispatch
• Offer / promise (only 1 by email)
• The arguments and benefits to put forward
• The call to action and the urgency that we will put there
• The sender
• The object (a basis of work) or the title of the emailing
• The preheader (= the first sentence of the emailing that appears on smartphones, just after the object)
• PS (optional)
• The contributors who will write the text, and the people who will validate
• The internal mailing list to receive the email
• The back-planning to validate the deadlines
• ...

The goal is to have all the information in hand before you start writing the content.

4 - Create the content in your emailing solution

You've probably already received a newsletter filled with illegible characters like "hello ’ll”.

If you create your newsletter text with Microsoft Word and try to copy / paste it into your HTML editor, most of the time you will also import WORD-specific formatting.

As a result, possibly make your text in Word, but then copy the text as "text" (copy the contents of your text in the notepad of Windows, in order to lose any formatting).

Always read the text again and activate the spellchecker.

Save the edition on your hard drive or in your emailing solution under a different name from your template.

If you plan to archive your newsletters, consider uploading them to your site and giving access to them (the famous "read on the web ..." link). Always provide a version of the latest newsletter sent to your site and provide a link in the one that is sent that will allow readers, if its display is corrupt, to view it online.

Also check the fonts used, punctuation, grammar and spelling errors.

5 - Send yourself an email-test as well as colleagues on the editorial board

Ensure that what your subscribers are going to meet your expectations, send yourself a copy of your HTML newsletter.

Also send copies to your Outlook (hotmail), Gmail and Yahoo accounts (if you do not have one, open it for free).

You need to check if the display and reception via this type of mail are correct, if the links are clickable and arrive on the right pages...

Following this test make the necessary corrections and then forward to your colleagues on the editorial board for a final review.

The goal is to check that texts are correct, functional links ...

Usually it's when you have just sent the email, that a person is manifesting himself.

The good practice is to send the email first internally, then send the email externally 1/2 day later.

Now that you've mastered these 5 steps, you're ready to send your HTML newsletter.

An HTML newsletter should be published regularly enough to keep in touch with your customers and prospects, with a classic timing being every month or quarter, with the addition of series of automatic messages sent to your new prospects and customers.

Tamtam did it for you:

Tamtam E-News and Tamtam E-mailing are two integrated applications that allow you to easily ship your emailing campaigns to your targets.

You can easily define one or more templates that will convey the image of your company, your products or even for example a specific event.

In just a few clicks, you will be able to build an amazing newsletter.