How to Create a Newsletter Strategy

Having a newsletter is a great strategy if you're looking for new potential customers, generating more sales, and/or increasing the loyalty of existing clients. Within the email marketing strategy you can develop for your business, a newsletter is the tool that can most help you build a sustained, ongoing relationship with your subscribers. Like any strategy, it has its pros, cons, and tricks that make it more effective.

In this blog post, we cover the most important topics to know for building a solid newsletter strategy:

1. What is a newsletter?
2. What is it for and how does it work?
3. Why create a newsletter?
4. What are the best practices for standing out with a newsletter?
5. What can we achieve with a newsletter strategy?
6. How to build an email marketing strategy?

If you don't have time to read this blog post right now, watch my video on my YouTube channel.

I cover a year of my newsletter strategy experience in just a few minutes.

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What is a newsletter?

A newsletter is an email sent to subscribers that typically contains varied content such as news, announcements, promotions, and updates about new products or services. It's a type of email marketing strategy that helps businesses stay in touch with their customers by providing them with regular updates about their products or services.

Launching a newsletter strategy can help businesses attract potential customers, generate more sales, and increase customer loyalty.

Key benefits of having a newsletter

• Keeps your customers informed about the latest news and new product or service launches.
• Lets you announce special offers and promotions to customers.
• Makes it easier to reach more potential customers and increase your sales.
• Builds engagement and loyalty among your existing customers toward your product or service.

What is a newsletter for and how does it work?

You may have already noticed that most companies across different sectors have a newsletter — think Zara or Ikea. There's clearly an important reason why businesses use this strategy: it allows them to stay in touch with their customers, subscribers, and potential leads.

It involves regularly sending newsletters with relevant content — such as news related to the company's product or service. Each newsletter typically features an engaging landing page that draws readers to learn more, along with various content types such as educational articles or videos.

Why create a newsletter? The advantages.

Sending a newsletter is an excellent opportunity to reach your potential customers and establish yourself as their go-to reference point.

There are several advantages to including a newsletter in your inbound marketing strategy. Let's look at them together:

1. Newsletters are trending because in an age of information overload, users need to filter content sources and topics they actually care about. Unlike other channels, the subscriber — through the actions required to sign up — shows greater commitment to following your content, placing them in a MOF (Middle of the Funnel) position compared to social media, which is typically TOF (Top of the Funnel). This is also a responsibility for the creator, who must first earn trust through other channels to attract a cold audience, and then maintain consistent content that builds interest and relationship.
2. For the subscriber, a newsletter offers deeper content than other communication channels. Unlike content consumed throughout the day on social platforms, email is usually read when the user has more time and can enjoy it calmly, paying closer attention. This means the quality of the user's relationship with the content increases.
3. Finally, for a content creator, a newsletter means having a direct and personal connection with the people who follow you — something not all channels allow. This also makes it possible to launch marketing automation actions that are impossible to run on other digital platforms, and most importantly, to own a contact list you built yourself.

What can we achieve with a good strategy? My experience.

I currently run two newsletters — one for my personal brand, and one in Italian for Inter Milan fans (the latter is the largest Inter fan newsletter in Italy).

Let me share a bit of my experience in the hope it's useful to you too. If you want to see a concrete example, you can subscribe to my newsletter in English.

Without a doubt, thanks to my newsletters I have achieved:

• More clients. Most of my clients and paid members of the Passione Inter club (my Inter Milan project) are also loyal newsletter subscribers. As I mentioned, a newsletter is one of the most loyalty-building marketing channels, which is why it becomes one of the most effective sales channels.
• More social media followers. In the case of Passione Inter, every Friday we select a main newsletter topic and offer it as an audio and video link as well, so the subscriber can choose the format that suits their situation when they open the newsletter. As you can imagine, this has helped us gain more subscribers on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
• Ownership of contacts. This is one of the main benefits — and simultaneously one of the most undervalued by businesses. Passione Inter is the most-watched channel on YouTube Italy during Inter Milan matches, with peaks of up to 12,000 live viewers. But if YouTube were to close our channel due to an algorithm error, we'd risk losing a large part of our business visibility. The newsletter has kept us safe from any external platform problems, serving as a lifeline when needed — thanks to a database of our most loyal (and therefore most important) users that we fully own. Social media is essential and represents vital channels for awareness and loyalty, but you remain exposed to rules and dynamics outside your control. A newsletter represents a more advanced and far more controllable channel.

How to build an email marketing strategy?

Creating a successful email marketing strategy takes time and effort, but it can be an incredibly effective way to reach your target customers or leads. Here's a summary of the steps for creating an email marketing strategy:

1. Create a dedicated email account for your marketing campaigns.
2. Build a subscriber list of people who have expressed interest in your product or service.
3. Segment your subscribers into different groups based on their interests — a great way to ensure the messages you send are relevant and useful.
4. Add a newsletter subscription option to your website.
5. Send emails regularly, but not too frequently.

Once these basic elements are in place, you can start tracking the leads generated by your emails and refining your strategy as needed. One of the most profitable actions you can take is lead nurturing — you can find more information in my article on what lead nurturing is and what it's used for.

With careful segmentation and targeted messaging, an effective email marketing strategy can generate more leads for your business and help increase sales of your product or service.

What are the best practices for standing out with a newsletter?

As we mentioned, newsletters are used by many businesses — including your competitors — so it's important to differentiate yourself, deliver value that your subscribers recognize, for the newsletter to have an impact.

Standing out ensures that your emails rise above the rest in the inbox. Following these basic steps, you'll be able to create an effective newsletter campaign that helps you reach your goals and maximize value for the subscriber.

• Have a defined value proposition so you can offer value to new users who want to follow you. A clear value proposition on the newsletter subscription page will undoubtedly improve your subscription rate.
• Think about the user's reading experience with your emails. Don't make the mistake of sending only promotional content destined for the trash.
• Organize the content in your newsletter in a clear, easily identifiable way.
• Consider the design of your newsletter — it should align with your brand. Use your brand kit colors.
• Keep in mind the sending frequency of your newsletters. There's no exact number of emails to send — what matters is that you're neither invasive nor too infrequent. In general, it depends on the sector. If you're unsure, subscribe to newsletters in your industry to get a benchmark.
• Segment your audience so that each newsletter's content is specifically tailored to their interests or needs. This is without a doubt one of the best email marketing practices.
• Include a privacy policy in each newsletter you send, so subscribers feel confident when subscribing or unsubscribing from your list.
• Try to include — without overdoing it — interactive elements such as clickable buttons and subscription options in the email body, as these can help increase engagement with that particular newsletter.
• Finally, make sure to make subscription management easy via a subscription form, so people can choose what type of newsletters they want to receive.

By following these best practices, you can ensure your emails stand out while adhering to industry standards and providing a safe experience for your subscribers.