How To Start a Newsletter The Right Way [2/3]
What to build
You can get away just with Mailchimp or a similar newsletter provider. If you send plain text emails only and are fine with the archive functionality of Mailchimp, congratulations: you can skip the following section and the associated costs. If you actually want to be successful, you might want to consider the following list of essential features for your MVP.
Your Email
You want to send emails to hundreds, thousands or even more subscribers. So you should consider a few points before.
HTML Mail Template via MJML
Plaintext emails can be fine. Absolutely fine. If you are an expert in your field and send out regular updates to your interested niche audience, HTML emails can be counterproductive. They might even turn down existing subscribers and turn away prospects. HTML emails in those and similar scenarios are “smelly”. Just keep it simple and convince with your valuable content. In most other cases HTML emails are a must-have in 2021. Customers are craving for beautiful and shiny things. Nothing is more boring than 2000 words in a 10pt font on a white canvas.
The problem here is, that there is a plethora of email clients out there, and unfortunately there is no standard set of HTML and CSS features, that is understood by all or even the majority of them. It is worse than the browser situation in 2010.
The solution: MJML — a markup language developed by the fine folks of Mailjet, another newsletter provider. MJML allows your developers to define a responsive email template in a special, HTML-like and easy to learn markup language and garnish everything with a bit of CSS. A transformation plugin then converts that markup into old-school, table based HTML and takes care about all the quirks of the different email clients out there. What makes this solution even better, there is a WYSIWYG editor as well as a browser based version of it. Finally there is a transform component available for node.js, which outputs the final HTML.
There are other solutions too. But after plenty of research we ended up using MJML and we love it!
Double Opt In Email
Data protection & privacy are a thing. And that is good! You can create a newsletter sign up form without a double opt in. You can also enter a McDonalds, head over to the counter and order a “McGyver” brimming with self-confidence. The question is, whether you want to.
Double opt in emails are a standard and available at all newsletter providers, that you will find. But it gets problematic, when you want to have a) your own customized signup form on your website, b) the double opt in email sent by your provider, and c) a “Thanks for the signup” page on your own website again. Trust me, we have been there.
In addition you need a design and proper text and caption. But if you followed the above advice and use MJML, that should not be of your concern. So it is just content.
Welcome Email
Oh, and you need another one: a welcome email. Think about this one properly. You value your subscriber. And a proper welcome email shows your respect and thanks for the recently made subscription. At the same time it is a chance to bond. It is your chance to show your subscriber, that you are worth her trust. Do not sell. Do not ask for anything. Just be the nice person you are and say “Hello, welcome and thank you for your subscription.”. You probably do not want to send that welcome email right after the subscription itself. That looks like it is automated (as it should be) but is counterproductive. Have it sent a few hours or even a day after the sign up. And make it a nice one.
Proper Timezone and Sender Config
There are certain times, when your subscribers are more likely to open your email. That heavily depends on your field of expertise and therefore your audience, so you will have to find out. But if you automate the sending process (which you should) you need to make sure, that the time your email is supposed to be sent, matches the time it is actually sent. And since the world is a rocky planet rotating around itself once in 24 hours, time does not equal time. You should definitely check and double check the timezone config of your newsletter provider. If there is none, consider a provider change.
SPF and DKIM Records
Spam is a problem. A huge one. And we have come a long way to get rid of it. Unfortunately, a number of these quite sensible measures are working against us, when we want to send a newsletter to hundreds, thousands or even more subscribers. Therefore one of the most important things is, that your email provider is technically allowed to send emails with a correct and existing email address on your behalf and from your domain.
And here SPF and DKIM records come into play. Definitely consult the docs of your newsletter provider, you need to set those records up for your domain. Otherwise I guarantee, 99% of your emails will end up in your subscribers SPAM folder or in newsletter heaven. And as there are very specific sub-reddits at reddit.com, there are very specific sub-hells in the hell for newsletter owners who do not play according to the rules.
Unsubscribe Functionality
Legally you have to have a proper and working Unsubscribe functionality. Most of it must come from your newsletter provider. Some of them will even put a separate footer below all your emails with contact data and an Unsubscribe link. But — trust me — you want to make it as easy as possible for your subscribers to unsubscribe. And we will come to the “why” down below. Additionally, for some time now a number of modern email clients come with a kind of integrated unsubscribe functionality, which is based on certain headers that need to be present in your emails head. If so, subscribers can simply hit a button in their email client to get rid of you. You want that! Go on and read further.
Your Frontend
Logo, Design & Domain
The obvious ones. Yes, you can go to fiver.com. Yes you can be lucky and actually get something that matches your needs and expectations. Chances are, you are better off, hiring a professional designer.
There is one thing, you need to keep in mind. The world went mobile. The majority of readers of your newsletter and hence visitors on your website will perform the act of visitation with a mobile device. So you need to have a responsive design. Period.
Regarding your domain. Don’t, just don’t come up with any fancy artificial name that nobody understands but you. It is a nice idea and everybody including Aunt Judy and your Grandma love it, but your potential subscribers don’t get it. Pick a domain name, that directly transports your main value. If it is longer, fine. Not fancy, fine. The world does not need more xxx-ingo’s or other three-syllable domain bullshit. Your name should be what you stand for.
Homepage with Sign Up Form
You need that one. And there needs to be a sign up form on your homepage. Ideally you print the latest issue of your newsletter on your homepage so prospects know what they are getting into. There are additional things you should put on your homepage, but the product and a sign up form … consider it the MVP of the MVP.
Additional Sign Up Forms
Speaking about sign up forms — most prospects will not enter your page via your homepage. When you are are up and running, and configured a web statistics solution properly (we will come to that), you will soon realize, that most of the traffic you receive, will hit everything but your homepage. And that is good. So be prepared to put sign up forms below all valuable content, that you provide. In the beginning that will be your archive index page and the archived versions of the newsletter itself. Of course, don’t forget all the landing pages, that you will create during the next months and years. So having the ability to put a sign up form anywhere is substantial. Substantial!
Newsletter Index — Your Archive
Content is king. People. Love. Content.
Yes, you send it out via email to your 63 subscribers, but you present it to millions of prospects in your archive. If you do not plan to have an archive with all your previous newsletters, say Goodnight. You are an expert in your field. Your knowledge and expertise is worth … a lot. So why do you want to hide the most valuable thing you have, your content? You need to have an archive!
Newsletter Pages
The archive is just the overview, the table of contents. Of course you want to render each and every newsletter individually too. So that all these intellectual gems are available forever and ever for any future potential reader as well as search engine robots. <- Get it? Having a sign up form below every newsletter makes it easy for those, who are interested in your content, to sign up. Just put one there. It does not hurt.
Must Haves: Terms & Conditions, Privacy Statement, Imprint
The whole development of your platform is time consuming, of course. But there is more homework waiting for you. Depending on your district of jurisdiction there are a number of legal requirements to be met. You might need a page with Terms & Conditions, a Privacy Statement, outlining how you handle your users data and possibly an Imprint should you operate from within the European Union. There are generator services, yes. We did not find a single one, that was able to render proper documents for a newsletter. Add a few days to your estimation, you will need them.
Personal Profile
A newsletter is all about your content. But it also about you. When someone reads what you have to say, that someone wants to know, who it is, who has to say something. We are all human beings, but there has been a time, when even the one man show around the corner tried to hide behind some business jargon, a business website and a number of phrases that 99% of their competitors just repeated. A newsletter on the other hand is all about trust. You do not have to lay out your whole personal life in front of your readers. Don’t. But be open, be honest and present a picture of yourself instead one of an anonymous business. You are an expert in your field. Let your readers know, and introduce yourself as you would to any other respectable person in a different situation. That is the foundation of the trust you need.
Social Integration
We spoke about reach already. You might not like the social platforms of our time. Nevertheless you will not get around them. Try and fail. Make sure, that your newsletter — or even better your individual articles — can easily be shared with the click of a button. And add individual parameters to the sharing URLs, so you can measure what works. Don’t get me wrong here, I am not talking about tracking your users. I am talking about gathering anonymous, statistical data which helps you to find out, what works, and what does not. We will talk about possible solutions for that again down below.
Content Delivery Network
If you are a tech-savvy person, you get it. Otherwise: you will need a content delivery network for images and other assets, so your infrastructure does not get shattered into pieces the moment, one of your hopefully successful ad campaigns actually drives some traffic to your website. Also many users might open your newsletter shortly after you sent it. If your images do not load in time then, you have a problem. A CDN will solve that for you.
OpenGraph Tags
I wish there was a standard that every social platform respected, unfortunately there is only OpenGraph. Not all of the platforms implement that standard or use just a subset. Why is this important? Well, whenever you or one of your subscribers shares one of your articles on any of the social platforms, first of all, that is awesome. You seem to be on the right track. But the platform will want to render some content, hence they automatically request your newsletter or article page and extract the necessary information from additional tags, that you hopefully put up there beforehand. OpenGraph is a good start, but check, whether all social platforms you actually target, really support OpenGraph or cook their own soup. Yes, looking at you Twitter.
Landing Pages
Soon after your start you will end up in the valley of tears. Family & friends have signed up, seen all your content and drive your traffic stats into highs, that will let you sleep like an innocent baby. For a few days. But as soon as you reached the end of your list of contacts and your network, your numbers will break down. Welcome to the most exciting rollercoaster ride of the coming month. But in contrast to a rollercoaster it is you, who is in charge. It is you, who is responsible for traffic. If you do not realize or accept that fact, you can stop the regular payment for your domain name immediately. Otherwise you will start numerous different campaigns over the upcoming month. Each campaign will be different. Each one might target a completely different group of prospects and each one will have different requirements, the moment the prospect lands on your page.
You will need at least one, ideally more than one landing page per campaign. In a perfect world your backend developers help you out with landing pages, that you can create on your own in the CMS just by entering the content and a slug. If you omit that step, you ignore one of the biggest factors of conversion optimization. And that is, what it is all about. Even a modest change of the conversion rate during sign up of a campaign will make a huge difference at the end of your funnel. Do the math.
Your Backend
You need automation. You need structure. You want to be able to write separate articles, add links, images, other resources. You want to be able to put arbitrary articles into a publication / newsletter. You want to handle your images, short URLs, landing pages, intros, outros. And you do not want to do all this in a HTML one-pager for every issue. So you need a backend.
Newsletter Integration
Ideally you just write a number of articles, upload pictures, put your publication together, add an intro, an outro and compile your newsletter template with the push of a button. Your template is then handed over to your newsletter provider from where you can send it to your waiting subscribers. Most, if not all newsletter providers have an API for that sort of thing. Use it.
Do not build your newsletter from scratch every time. It will waste time, becomes old quickly and chances are, you will end up with inconsistencies. So in an ideal scenario you have a content management system for all your editorial work and an application, which puts together every newsletter automatically and hands it over to your newsletter provider.
Social Platform Integration
Doing your research, writing that newsletter, preparing all resources and images is work. Much work. You will be happy, when you sent out the latest issue. But wait, you also wanted to post your newsletter to Facebook. Do not forget Twitter, Instagram … and all the other platforms that might be important for your audience.
Automate that! Some newsletter providers cover at least the most important platforms and provide features to create and schedule posts. This becomes more important, when you want to create social posts not only for every newsletter, but for separate articles afterwards. If your newsletter provider does not have it, consider a change or implement it yourself. You remember … consistency.
Content Backend for Articles & Publications
I mentioned the CMS already. In the beginning you might not need it. But chances are, you really survive, will have more content editors and therefore more content. Without a CMS you will get lost quickly. It is also super useful, if you can just write articles and have them ready so you can dynamically decide, which ones to put into your to-be-released publication.
Short URLs and Landingpages
You do not want to hide anything from your readers, but when you gather statistical usage data, you might end up with URLs like that:
Do you want to publish such an URL? Probably not. Your backend should provide you with an URL rewriter, that allows you to publish something like that instead:
No worries, the reader will see your beautifully crafted URL slug anyways, but you do not drive away potential readers with a URL that literally cries: TRACKER! Close to no one understands the difference between tracking and anonymous statistical data gathering. Keep that in mind here.
Being able to simply create landing pages via your CMS comes also very handy. Create a template consisting of a main caption, a sub caption and an image. Put everything in a template, add a responsive design containing your sign up form and voila … you can create new landing pages for each and every campaign in seconds. Literally.
That is the MVP functionality your frontend and backend should have. Sure, your opinion about an MVP might be a different one, and you are probably right. But your initial success will bring you here much sooner, than you might think. And do not underestimate the development effort. Even a skilled team of developers will need a few weeks to implement all of the above.
But that is all technicalities. Let us speak about some non-technicals in part 3 of this series.
