With the rapid digitalization and advent of emerging online news websites, most people now consume news content through their smart gadgets. News websites depend on online readership to grow their subscription lists. So how does the online newspaper attract new readers while keeping its current ones? Through email marketing!
Email marketing for news websites involves news outlets sending emails to their list of subscribers to promote their daily news content and drive traffic asap before the news gets stale. It is among the most popular and successful techniques to increase the readership of online newspapers.
This article takes you through strategies you can use to make email marketing effective. All these email marketing hacks mentioned here will help your online news website grow and expand quickly.
How to Do Email Marketing for Your News Website?
Maintaining email marketing relations between the news website and its subscribers presents a big challenge, but you don’t have to worry.
Here are tips to help you create effective news email marketing campaigns.
1. Curate a Contact List which REALLY Cares!
The first step in successful news email marketing is to have an active email list. Most news websites already have some contacts to begin an email list.
But these are sign-ups who are often forced since the content is hidden behind a sign-up wall, or even worse, a pay-wall. Nobody wants that!
Open your content for everyone. But if you don’t have a list yet, keep reading to know how you can curate one.
First, consider the target audience you already have.
Perhaps it’s the business contacts you regularly email, or you start with a small group of encouraging friends and family.
Don’t give up even if you’re starting from zero while establishing an email list. Add an online sign-up form to your website, and encourage your social media fans and regular customers to join up as a start.
I use the word encourage. Don’t shove your pop-ups down their throat.
Once you’ve collected the contacts who want to join and prepared a list, there’s no stopping. Your emails will hit the inbox of the right individuals, resulting in revenue generation for your news website.
However, good things take time. So, if you’re starting from scratch, be patient. If not, you can always get fast-paced email marketing services and outcomes by hiring a service provider.
2. Send Personalized News Daily
Establishing daily communication with your subscribers becomes easy with personalization.
People rarely have time to read the entire newspaper, and occasionally it might be a luxury to skim the headlines to see what interests them.
You can get your subscribers to indicate the news topics they are interested in and then have those topics delivered to their mailbox daily.
The links will redirect them to the news website, making it more convenient and dependable to the users.
3. Curate Hot & Important News Emails
You can inform your subscribers about the hottest news on your website. Look for the stories that receive the most shares and comments, then give your subscribers a summary of those stories once a week.
Although this cannot be planned, it can be quite helpful in increasing subscriber loyalty. Share the same information via emails if your news could influence society.
This is a certain technique to increase your subscriber count.
4. Give Third-Party Offers
Inform your subscribers via email if your customers or other parties are providing them with exclusive deals or prices.
If the offers are appealing, they will undoubtedly continue to subscribe. Once done, go for something unique, like sharing news that can’t be found elsewhere.
5. Shares Unique and Catchy News
To learn more about a specific sensational occurrence, you can encourage your online subscribers to purchase the print media or separately offer informative data on your site.
Send them an alert email, and ask them to visit your website or purchase the printed version for further information. Creating interest can be a powerful sales strategy.
6. Approach Customers to Place Ads
You can approach customers that advertise on your print publications and web portal using email marketing.
These tactics might be successful when informing customers or advertisers of upcoming events and print editions where they can place ads to earn money.
Plan this so that they can adjust their advertising strategy. You can persuade your clients to sponsor a special sports or fashion newspaper edition in print through email newsletters.
Using the same clients’ adverts, you can effortlessly boost your income. But be careful not to overstuff the newsletter with ads, or it can get flagged as spam.
7. Keep the Campaign Engaging
You must engage with your list of newsletter subscribers if you want your email newsletter plan to be successful. But how do you ensure optimum engagement?
- Your newsletters should follow a predetermined schedule. This will shape and structure your communication while engaging your subscribers in receiving your emails.
- Avoid letting too much time pass between your interactions. You should send information frequently so potential clients can remember you and recognize your email address when it appears in their inbox.
- Ensure you include links to your stuff; throw in a few controversial statements. If you add unique comments to each article in your newsletters, you can easily make them more engaging.
8. Leverage the Power of Email Gamification
Today, newsletter emails have become a way for many news websites to keep their subscribers engaged. Maybe that’s because it includes a range of content types.
You can make your newsletter stand out with email gamification, a game changer in email marketing. When you incorporate games into your newsletter email, adhere to the following rules:
- Make the games more engaging. Your games should have responsiveness and some animation. There is data to support the idea that because moving images serve as stimuli, people engage with them for longer periods. (Games like quizzes can include topics from current affairs, international relations, etc.)
- Focus on the images carefully. Readers are more compelled by dynamic, appealing pictures, which keep them reading your newsletter. Also, don’t go overboard. Gamification is popular now, but don’t adopt it only to be hip. If gamification isn’t appropriate for your specific newsletter, don’t push it.
That’s it! By following these steps, you’ll be much closer to running your news website’s most successful email marketing campaign via gamification.
9. Track & Analyse your Email Marketing Results
Email marketing is not a ‘get results overnight’ scheme. It takes time but it is insanely effective when done right.
I’ve covered more on this in my article on: How long does email marketing take to work?
Plus, you should monitor your open rates, unsubscribe rates, click-through rates, etc., and strive to improve over time.
You must thoroughly grasp each email’s performance if you hope to see actual results from your email marketing efforts.
Only then can you make the necessary adjustments and discover more about your subscribers.
Reviewing your email statistics briefly will provide useful details such as who opened your email, who clicked on particular links, and what content your readers found most intriguing.
Email Marketing For News Website: Real-Life Example
How do reputable news sites use email marketing? What makes them successful, and what are the potential drawbacks?
In the next section, we take you through one of the most effective email marketing examples.
1. CNN Leverages Mailchimp
CNN uses Mailchimp for email marketing. However, it has a distinct system for collecting and verifying emails.
Your email is verified once you sign up for one of CNN’s newsletters before being added to their email list.
2. CNN Focuses on Email Segmentation & Personalization
Before signing up for the CNN newsletter, people have to decide whether to subscribe to a general news, political, business, global marketing, or inspirational news newsletter.
This is significant since it aids in the segmentation and personalization of emails. This helps them generate more email opens and click-through rates.
Most News Websites Have Contact Lists Filled With Garbage
Email marketing is an excellent approach every news website should adopt to accelerate its growth and scalability.
But remember, it all starts with having people as contacts who really care about your content and style.
You can now accomplish the objective of building and fostering truthful relationships with subscribers, thanks to email marketing contact list curation with those people who want your emails.
It keeps them engaged and lets them feel like sticking around, and you can also promote any special promo, deal, or discount to subscribers.
Furthermore, managing newsletters is relatively easy.
With the solutions addressed in this article, your news website should be able to gain more subscribers, higher engagement, and increased traffic.
So, make the most of a well-planned email marketing campaign and let your news website witness traffic growth like never before.