10 Traits of the Unicorn Email Newsletter

Raise your hand if you want another email newsletter! Nope? Me neither. 


We’d sooner expect to see a unicorn in our inboxes than an email newsletter we actually want to read. But unlike unicorns, they do exist! I’ve managed to collect a few over time. Here’s what makes them so good (and rare). 

1. BEAUTIFUL EMAIL DESIGN + LAYOUT

Beauty may only be skin (or screen) deep, but it’s critical to your email newsletter. Your email needs to be aesthetically pleasing, on-brand, easily scannable, and attention-grabbing. Look for email design templates with: 

  • plenty of white space, 
  • attention-grabbing call-to-action (CTA) buttons, and 
  • engaging imagery to accompany your text. 

Check out this email template from Flodesk: clear branding, plenty of white space, and clear CTAs enticing the reader to engage more. Bonus: Flodesk templates are pre-written, so you can skip the writer’s block and go straight to copy editing!


Source: Arra Design Studio

2. ENGAGING IMAGES

The brain processes images up to 600 times faster than text. Your audience is bombarded with hundreds of thousands of messages per day. Messages that can be processed quickly are going to win. Your email newsletter should always feature engaging images that clearly communicate your message. Custom branded images are ideal, but if you’re not a photographer (and even if you are), brand photoshoots are time-consuming and expensive. You can significantly expand your image library with customizable stock photography. 

My favorite is Social Squares. Social Squares offers a monthly subscription for access to thousands of images. Using free, online tools like Canva, you can edit their images, adding your logo or other brand elements. Social Squares’ images are ideal for email templates and social media platforms. Below is an example of a stock image with added brand elements. 

3. COPYWRITING

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but in email marketing, your words are just as important as your images. 

First, there are several tactical reasons why words matter: 

  • 43 percent of Gmail users view emails with images off. Your copywriting will need to be compelling enough to engage those readers without the help of images.
  • Too many images could cause your email to load slowly or not all, so you’ll want to strike a balance between images and live text. 
  • Text is searchable through email service providers, images are not. Give your recipients an easy way to search for and pull up your email in their inboxes. 

Second, your images grab your audiences’ attention, but your words keep them engaged. Copywriting is substance. It’s how you connect, convince, and convert. 

Strong copy starts with understanding what your audience wants and knowing how you can help them get it.


4. EXCLUSIVE OFFERS OR CONTENT

The average person has around 200 emails in their inbox and responds to about 25 percent of them, which means many (especially email newsletters) probably get deleted without even being opened. It’s your job to give your recipient a reason to open it. Your email newsletter should contain at least one item that your audience can’t get anywhere else. Don’t email the same content, offers, or discounts that you also publish on your site or social media profiles. Your recipients have trusted you with their email addresses, reward them with content or offers that others don’t get. 

5. EXTREME TARGETING

The more you can segment your list based on your audiences’ preferences and behavior, the more relevant you can make your content. Of course, you must consider their user experience and your ability to scale when you collect data and customize your content. Many email marketing platforms allow you to create dynamic content based on data fields and behavior, which enables automation and scalability. Progressive profiling allows you to collect more data on your recipients over time without requiring them to provide too much information all at once. A big email list is great, but a deep understanding of your audience is even better. 


6. TIMING

There’s no magic, universal send time for email, but send time does matter! The optimal time to send emails varies by industry, audience, customer profile, and location. Email marketing platforms, such as Hubspot, include features that will suggest the best time to send emails based on open rates and historical data from your list. You can start with an educated guess for send time based on your products and knowledge of your audiences’ behaviors. Then, test out other times and monitor open rates and engagement levels. Once you find an optimal time, research shows consistency is important. 


7. CLARITY

Clarity can be achieved with a bit of planning. Create a theme for each newsletter and use an app or tool to plan your content. My favorite is the Content Planner – a physical planner, in which you can write down and categorize your content ideas. When you know your theme, purpose, and goal for each newsletter, your content will be clearer and more focused. 


8. STORYTELLING

Storytelling is becoming increasingly popular for content marketers because it works. Our brains are wired for story. Stories cause us to feel emotions and make it easier for us to store and retrieve information. Storytelling in an email is going to look different than in a book, tv show, or even a blog post, but it can (and should) be done. Start with a subject line to pique your readers’ curiosity, for example: 

How the worst advice led me to the best decision

Weave your story into your newsletter, but remember to keep your content about your reader. The goal of storytelling is to get your reader to identify with the character and see themselves in the story. 


9. SCARCITY 

For discounts, gifts, and offers featured in your newsletter, create scarcity by limiting the time or number of people to which they are available. This works well as a follow-up to a launch email. For example, if you announced a retreat the week before, your newsletter could reference it with added scarcity like: 

Fifteen more people have signed up for the retreat since I emailed you about it Friday. There are eight spots left, and I’d love for you to get one of them.


Click here to snag your space. 


10. IT’S NOT CALLED A NEWSLETTER

The best email newsletters aren’t ever referred to as “newsletters”. Seriously, who wants to get another newsletter? Keeping in touch with your email list at a consistent cadence is a great idea, but as far as your audience is concerned, you’re not sending them a newsletter. A newsletter is about you, and your content should be about them. Keep that in mind when you invite them to opt-in, open your email, and click your CTAs. 

If your email newsletter has these 10 traits, you bet I’ll raise my hand to get it and so will your audience. Challenge your previous open and click-through rates on each send and strive to constantly improve them. The more value you offer in your emails, the more valuable (read: lucrative) your email list will be. 


Pen & Purpose

ChatGPT: Copywriting Comrade or Competition

ChatGPT for Copywriters: Comrade or Competition?

By Emily Lewis • 20 Sep, 2023
Two years ago, I tried the marketing and copywriting AI tool Jasper (at the time branded as Jarvis). I concluded it and similar AI tools weren't worth my time or investment because the output was generic, repetitive and sometimes nonsensical. Then in November 2022, ChatGPT launched and quickly went viral on social media as users shared examples of the impressive ways they were using it. For content creation and copywriting, it was more advanced than any other AI tool I’d seen and free! The AI Copywriting Revolution 🚀 Fast forward to today, AI ( thanks to ChatGPT ) has evolved. It's now the hottest trend in town, with many media outlets predicting AI-tools will revolutionize business practices across every major industry. So, what's behind this meteoric rise in popularity? Let's break it down: Efficiency & Speed: AI tools like GPT-4 have turbocharged the writing process. A first draft that once took a writer 1-2 hours can now be done in minutes. Consistency: AI tools maintain a consistent tone and style regardless of who is inputting the information. Scalability: Not only do AI-tools enable you to create content in a fraction of the time you could do it manually, they allow you to outsource creating it to anyone that can input information. At least in theory. Top AI Tools for Business & Marketing 🛠️ While I don’t believe copywriting AI tools are a good replacement for a human writer of any skill level, they have drastically improved since 2021, and today’s AI tools are absolutely worth investing in. When coupled with a human, these are my favorite AI writing tools: GPT-4: I used it to generate this post. While I did a lot of editing, it gave me a first draft, which likely would’ve taken me close to an hour to write without assistance. Feed it a prompt, and it'll churn out a draft in minutes. The better and more detailed your input, the better output it delivers. And you can give your tool feedback to keep editing the draft. Grammarly: The free version spots grammatical errors and helps you enhance readability. Grammarly Premium does everything the free version does, plus checks for plagiarism, offers recommendations based on over 400+ writing styles, and has an AI writing assistant (although not as sophisticated as GPT-4). SurferSEO: Using AI to analyze top-performing content in your industry, SurferSEO helps you craft SEO-optimized copy based on keyword searches and queries. There are hundreds of AI tools available and dozens specifically for copywriting. Pick a few that work for you. Trying to use too many tools can easily derail your efficiency and productivity. AI needs you to function, not the other way around. Maximizing the AI Advantage 🚀 Now that you have your favorite AI tools in hand, how do you squeeze every last drop of potential from them? Here's the playbook: Customize, Don't Compromise: Don’t expect perfection. AI is not a mind-reader. It’s an interpreter of the knowledge and experiences you give it. It also pulls from other sources around the web to complete your request. The content you publish becomes your digital portfolio, so don't let AI tools diminish the quality of it. Quality Control: Always have a human check the output and edit as needed. I've never published an AI-generated piece that didn’t require edits. Feedback Loop: Get feedback from your marketing tools, audience, customers, or team on AI-generated content. If they report a decrease in quality, relevance or effectiveness, try changing your input or editing processes. What AI Can't Replace 🧠 AI can’t replace you. Because while it can put words on paper for you, it lacks: Creativity: The AI may paint by numbers, but the canvas is still your domain. Innovative ideas, storytelling, wisdom, and expertise gained from experience are firmly in your human court. Empathy: AI doesn't have a heart. It can't truly understand your audience's emotions and respond with the compassion and empathy that only a human can provide. Strategy: Crafting a content strategy that aligns with your business goals requires human finesse. AI can execute, but the roadmap is your creation. There's no question that AI has drastically impacted the marketing and copywriting industries. But like any other technology, it doesn’t function on its own. AI can’t replace a skilled human writer, but it can improve their productivity and efficiency in unprecedented ways. The new era of copywriting and content marketing is not driven by AI, it’s driven by humans leveraging the power of AI.

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