Newsletter example: How to create an email template with best practices

Why do you want to send a newsletter?

Are you not yet convinced of the power of e-mail marketing anyway? Let us convince you!

By sending a newsletter to your customers:

• Build a relationship with your customer base
• Let your customers know about news, sales or other novelties
• Personalise it so that you continue to address your customers personally and show them relevant content
• Stay top of mind with your target group
• Bring your products back to the attention of your customers
• Increase your conversions

Another very useful thing: everything you do with email marketing is measurable. Your conversions (very important), but also your open and click rates, for example. There are plenty of reasons why you want to send a newsletter to your customers. Also consider the cost: are you going to spend money on Google ads? Or will you let your staff create newsletters, charging you labour only for the hours spent? This is a consideration to make, but experience shows that most entrepreneurs then opt for email marketing anyway.

💡 Did you know that the ROI for e-mail marketing is also many times higher than the ROI for Google advertising?

Therefore, it can be argued that e-mail marketing can almost always go out. Whether your fanbase is very large or very small: it is still a channel with which you can easily reach your target group. The big question here is rather: how do you make a good newsletter?

How to create a newsletter?

A newsletter is a handy marketing tool where you send an e-mail with a certain topic or theme that is relevant to the recipient. But what does your target group find relevant? We are regularly asked what makes a newsletter a good newsletter. There is no simple answer. But we can tell you a lot about what you need to think about before you start working on your newsletter. Once you have this plan clear, a good newsletter often follows naturally. Follow the step-by-step plan for creating your newsletter and you will be fine!

Step 1. Define the purpose of your newsletter

It sounds logical, and yet we see that this step is often skipped. Laying down your strategy starts with formulating an objective. This objective can represent anything. Do you want more conversion on your website? Or just more traffic? Do you want to promote specific brands? Do you want to boost your order value? Or do you want to encourage your customers to use your VIP discount more? It's all possible and nothing in this is wrong. It just depends on which goal suits your business.

Do you have multiple objectives in mind? That too is possible. But formulate your objectives clearly. If necessary, split your newsletter into several newsletters, so that each newsletter achieves its goal and does not overshoot the mark because you want too much with one newsletter.

Step 2. Determine the target audience(s) for your newsletter

Now that your goal is clear, move on to defining your target audience for your newsletter. Who exactly do you want to reach with your goal? If the goal and your target group are a perfect match, chances are you will achieve your goal. Do you have multiple target groups in mind? This is only encouraged in the marketing world. Not every customer is the same and not every customer has the same need to content. Divide your customers into target groups or segments. This way, you can see that one or more segments fit each target. Think about your segments' interests, your segments' purchase behavior or lifetime purchase value. You then apply products and offers in the newsletter that belong to your target group.

Step 3. What does your target audience need?

Now that you have determined the purpose and target audience of your newsletter, it is time to think about the needs of your target audience. This is important to know because you respond to this through the subject line and pre-header. This is the first thing your customer sees of your newsletter, without actually opening it. Knowing the needs of your target audience well is therefore a must.

Think well about it:

• What message exactly do you want to convey to your target group?
• What is the customer's need?

An example: your customer needs Christmas products and your message is to indicate that you now have a high discount on Christmas products. See what I did there? The message and the need completely match. In this way, you powerfully convey the right message to your target audience.

Step 4. Define the content of your newsletter

We have finally arrived at the actual content of your newsletter. Your content in your newsletter should match your customer's needs and what message you want to convey. Is your message that you are having a sale, but there is something completely different in your newsletter? Then you will see that your newsletter conversion rate will be disappointing. Do they match perfectly? In that case, your target audience will understand your message better and move faster to purchase.

Match your images and your text so that they reinforce each other. A great layout of a newsletter that we often see is:

1. Large banner with main objective. 2. Piece of text. 3. The offers (or the other goal) that it is about. 4. Small banner. 5. Footer.

Don't stare blindly at this. No newsletter content is necessarily wrong. What we do recommend is keeping your text-image ratio in balance. If you only use images and no text, an e-mail client may see your e-mail as spam. Does your email contain only text and no images? Then your target audience may actually see your email as boring and long-winded. Think carefully about how you proportion it.

Step 5. Structure your newsletter

You have the content of your newsletter. In step 5, you start thinking about the structure of your newsletter: what do you want to say first, what do you want to say next, etc.? It works best to test this: present your customers with an A variant and a B variant and see which one they respond best to. You often see that the longer you have to scroll, the fewer clicks you get at the end of the newsletter. It is therefore advisable to put the content that is least interesting at the bottom and the content that is most interesting at the top.

💡 Tip: With the advent of Mail Privacy Protection, you might not want to look only at the open rate, but rather at the click rate as a parameter for your A/B test.

Since most customers read through your newsletter scanning, it is important to include some eye-catchers in your newsletter. Think of clear call-to-action buttons, images or a GIF. Let what matters most stand out.

Step 6. Actually sending your newsletter

You have now completed all the steps to make sure your newsletter converts well. Now only the last step remains: actually sending your newsletter. In Reloadify, you have the option to send or schedule your newsletter immediately. Planning your newsletter and still want to make changes? This is always possible. At Reloadify, we prepare your newsletter 15 minutes before you send it out. This way we make sure your newsletter actually reaches your subscribers at the scheduled time. Would you like to send out your newsletter at different times to spread out your website traffic as well? This is possible! We send small batches of e-mails simultaneously to your customers in a time frame you specify.

Tips and tricks for the ultimate newsletter

We would like to give you some tips and tricks for creating the ultimate newsletter that converts well. Think about how long a newsletter can be, what is the best day to send out a newsletter, how many items you can include in your newsletter, etc. Important points you don't have to think about anymore!

Tip 1. How long should a newsletter be?

A good length for a newsletter is about 300 words, including images. You don't want to tire your target audience with a very long e-mail, because the chances of them getting distracted are enormous. Therefore, keep it compact. Not only for the attention of your target audience. Also for the length of your newsletter itself. Is your newsletter too long? Then Gmail will break your newsletter. You will already have to click on 'online version' to see the entire newsletter. This has to do not only with the length of your newsletter, but also with the size of your images. By default, Gmail aborts your newsletter when it exceeds 115 KB. Do you work a lot with images in your newsletter? Try to keep your images as small as possible. This will also improve the loading time of your newsletter.

Tip 2. How many items do you put in a newsletter?

'I'd rather throw my entire product range into the newsletter' is something we often hear. Yet you don't want this. You want to keep the focus on items you want to highlight at that moment. Think high-margin sale items, seasonal products such as deodorant in summer and Christmas presents in winter. Choose tactically, preferably 8-10 or so. No more, you don't want to give your customers choice stress. Not much less, either: You do want to highlight that you offer enough choice to your customers. Make a healthy division in this yourself. What works for one webshop may not work for another. Test carefully which division suits your webshop.

Tip 3. How do you build your sentences in your newsletter?

For your newsletter content, you prefer to create short sentences. Keep. It. Compact. Okay, not such short sentences. Make your newsletter readable for everyone. In general, the rule is: the longer the sentence, the harder it is to read. And the longer your newsletter ends up being. Keep your message compact and talk 'normally' to your target audience. Do not use difficult words when this does not suit them.

Tip 4. Which call-to-actions do you use in a newsletter?

A common question is which call-to-actions convert best for a newsletter. You want to prompt your newsletter subscribers to take action. In a newsletter that converts, this is often buying a product. Many more actions exist, think of contacting your company or signing up for a win. A good CTA grabs attention. How do you grab this attention from your customer?

Some examples are:

A Call-to-Action is clear and compact.

Your customer knows exactly what to do. 'Buy now', 'Order' 'Add to cart' are clear call-to-actions. When your call-to-action gets too long and you put it in a button as well, you end up with a very big button. Think: 'View all our Christmas and New Year offers here'. Not very compact. And it doesn't taste good either.

Call-to-action that makes a promise.

This is easy to incorporate into your call-to-action. Think of words like 'fast', 'simple' or 'free'.

A call-to-action with a direct action in it.

You want to push your customer to press the button now and proceed to purchase now. Words like 'now', 'fast' or 'in stock' always do well.

Not only the content of your call-to-action matter, the size, layout and colour also play a big role in optimizing a CTA.

Want to know which call-to-action resonates best with your target audience? Test, test and test. Test different CTA texts, colors and size. Insights into these will ultimately help you take your e-mail marketing conversion to the next level. Always test one aspect at a time.

The following tips come from the Email Benchmark 2022. Be aware that the email benchmark is one bunch of data and your business may operate differently. Don't see a big difference in numbers for a click rate on Thursday or Monday? Don't panic, this is possible! The best way is to get to know your target audience through A/B testing.

Tip 7. What is the most popular sending day for a newsletter?

The most popular sending day for sending a newsletter for an e-commerce company is Friday. Do not stare blindly at this, because there is a difference between what is the best day in terms of sending and the best day in terms of open rate. In general, the rule is that consumers often open the most newsletters early in the week. The benchmark shows that Tuesday gives the highest open rate as a sending day.

Tip 8. What is the best time to send your newsletter?

The best time is still 12:00 noon. This has been a popular time for years. This is often because consumers read through their emails at noon, during their breaks.

Tip 9. What is the best time of day for a high open rate of your newsletter?

Between 15:00 and 18:00 is the highest peak in terms of open rate. With the advent of Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, many emails are opened in the background, without the consumer having actually opened the email. A better metric is to look at the click-rate.

Newsletter examples

Are you looking for good newsletter examples? Then you've come to the right place. Because what exactly do you put in your newsletter? Well, that varies from newsletter to newsletter. What is important to know is that there are two different types of newsletters: Transactional and commercial. Transactional e-mails are e-mails that your customers get from you anyway. Think of an order confirmation, payment confirmation and shipping confirmation. Often, these emails are sent from your own platform. For commercial e-mails, such as newsletters and automated cross-sell e-mails, you often use an e-mail service provider. But, what exactly do you put in such a newsletter? I am happy to share some examples with you.

Newsletter example 1. Introduce your company

Nice that your customer has signed up for the newsletter. But, does this new customer really know you? Ultimately, you want to build a relationship with your customer. It goes without saying that you should then introduce yourself properly to your customer. Who are you, what do you do, and what can the customer come to you for? This is the so-called onboarding process: you introduce your new newsletter subscribers to you and the advantages of your webshop. Wondering how to do this? Then read our blog on how to welcome new customers.

Newsletter example 2. Theme-based approach

Is it summer? Autumn? Winter? Spring? Or just festival season? All these themes can be targeted with your newsletter. Think about selling sun cream in summer. Selling jumpers in winter. Or selling winter tyres in winter. It can be that easy. Give your newsletter a theme. How about a World Cup theme during the World Cup? Or a hay fever theme during spring and summer? A holiday theme during the summer holidays. You name it and there is a theme to go with it. Theme-based work is recommended. This way, your newsletter is structured, and you already have content for several weeks of the year. Ideal!

Newsletter example 3. Promote new products

What always works well in a newsletter is promoting new products. You know you've added new products to your website, but your customer doesn't yet. E-mail marketing is a good way to inform your customers of this. Even better: you often achieve the most results with this medium, as you can target a very large audience in one go. And that without it costing much time and energy. Simply take the new products from your platform, drag them into your newsletter and send them off! Reloadify contains your entire product catalogue, so you are never left with missing products and product information. Even better: you don't even need to get a banner created by your design colleagues. It can be that simple. This way, you instantly push your new items towards your customers to proceed to sales.

Newsletter example 4. Highlight a particular brand

Do you work a lot with brand owners? Then this is a great opportunity for you. You often make an entire newsletter planning for at least a quarter (preferably for a whole year). During this quarter, you can make arrangements with brand owners to push their brand in your newsletter. Does a brand owner want a whole newsletter featuring their brand? No problem! Just like that, you have another newsletter filled.

👉 Pro tip: do you have multiple brand owners who want this? Then consider strategically selling your spots in the newsletter. Think of a hero banner or just a spot at the bottom of the newsletter. Or, a newsletter entirely in the style of one brand. This way, you work optimally with the brands you sell. The brands benefit too: they are put in the spotlight among your entire database. The larger your database, the more interesting this becomes for a particular brand.

Newsletter example 5. Highlight your sale items

Every webshop has a sale from time to time. Just think of a clearance sale: emptying your warehouse to make room for new items. Such a clearance sale is perfect for the newsletter. Consumers generally love offers. Run your clearance sale in such a way that consumers feel they are getting a good deal. Consider an item for 50% off, accompanied by the text: 'Limited Edition' or 'Last pieces'.

This gives the feeling that the item is very special or that, on the contrary, the customer should be quick because there is still little stock of the item. Email is a low-threshold medium to clean up your warehouse once in a while.

Newsletter example 6. Highlight an update about your company

Do you have an update about your company that is of interest to your customers? E-mail them! Think of a new website or an acquisition of the company. You want to share this news with all your customers. With a new website, you want all your customers to come and see your new website. So what works better to email your entire database that a new website has been launched?

Think carefully about whether the news is of interest to your target audience.

Newsletter example 7. Target the different holidays (valentine, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, etc.)

Don't forget to include the most important days of the year in your e-mail marketing. The real sales grabbers such as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas and so on. These days should not be missing from your newsletter planning. These days are known for the fact that as a webshop, you offer a specific discount to your customers. Are you not doing this? No problem either!

Then make sure you always stay on top of your customers' minds by highlighting your product range for the holidays. Think of a nice fragrance for Mother's Day, a cool Father's Day gift or a nice gift set for Valentine's Day.

Newsletter example 8. Announce a special occasion

Do you have something to announce, such as a special sale or a VIP evening? Announce this to your customers on time! That way, you can be sure that this information reaches your customers in time. Great for your customers, great for you. A reminder after this is definitely in order. Nowadays, we get so many e-mails in a day, that your first e-mail might get forgotten.

A reminder will get your attention again.

Newsletter example 9. Let you sign up for a waiting list or pre-order

Do you already have something to share with your customers that they would like to sign up for? Mail it to your target group! This is a win-win situation: your target group gets to know that they can sign up and you get an idea of how popular a certain product is that they sign up for. Think pre-ordering the latest shoes, phone or a certain dress. This way, you give your customers the chance to be the first to get the product they want.

Creating e-mail templates

Now that you've got enough information about newsletter content, it's time to think about your newsletter layout. Think carefully about creating your email template. What exactly do you want to put in your email template? How do you make sure your e-mail template is not too long? But not too short either? In this chapter, we will discuss the importance of creating a template and how best to go about it.

You have several elements to choose from for your newsletter:

• Titles. Think of an H1, H2, H3 etc. Make your newsletter clear by adding titles.
• Paragraphs. Specifically insert a paragraph.
• Lists. This way you can easily create a list in your newsletter.
• Images. Upload your own image or find a free stock image directly in Reloadify through integration with Pexels and Pixabay.
• Buttons. Create your own button by dragging a standard button into your newsletter. You can then adapt your button to your own house style. Think about colour, typography and size. Do you choose straight corners or rounded corners?
• Dividers. A divider is a physical line that you place between your blocks. You can make the line as thick or thin as you like. The colour is also customizable.
• Spacers. A spacer is used as a block when you want to add extra white space in your e-mail. So you never have to press 'enter' forever. A spacer can be resized to fit your newsletter.
• Social icons. Add your social media channels to your newsletter to merge your channels.

Input for video (YouTube shorts, your own video or Vimeo). Would you like to add a video to your newsletter? This way you increase your engagement.

Is your wish not listed here? Don't panic, in Reloadify it is possible to insert your own HTML block.

How do you create an email template in Reloadify?

In Reloadify, it is relatively easy to set up an email template. We often hear that this is similar to setting up a newsletter in Canva. You drag and drop all your elements into your newsletter until you think it's finished. An example of how this works is shown below via a GIF:

Key components to think about are:

Header in your newsletter

A good start is half the battle. The first thing your customers see when they open your newsletter is the header. Pretty important to use this to grab and hold their attention. You want your customer to see at a glance that the newsletter comes from your website/brand. So keep your newsletter style the same as your website. Do this by using the same menu and colours. Also have your logo reflected in your header. The easier your customer recognizes your e-mail, the higher your click rate will be.

Sales items

This is where you place the items you want to promote. Will you do this in a product block? Or do you want to give some more information about the product itself with an introductory text? The choice is entirely up to you!

Any content items such as blogs

The newsletter is the perfect way to draw attention to your blogs. Ultimately, you want your blogs to be read by your customers, and your customers are easily approached via your newsletter.

Footer with your contact information and an unsubscribe link

The footer is the block at the bottom of your e-mail and is used to close it. Information it contains includes contact details and social media channels. A compulsory opt-out should not be missing. After all, you should always give your customers the option to unsubscribe. The best place for this is your footer.

In Reloadify, you can easily use e-mail templates. These e-mail templates are already available for you to use. Prefer to design your own? That is possible too! A practical tip: our templates are not formatted in HTML, but in JSON. This means that you cannot simply change the HTML of your template. Only when we send the e-mail, the e-mail is converted into an HTML e-mail so that e-mail clients can read it. Because you yourself easily drag and drop all your blocks into your newsletter, you are in control of what your email template looks like. Basically, an email template is not much different from a website or landing page. Instead, you want the same elements to appear: a menu bar, the same colour schemes, the same product images, etc. What makes Reloadify easy is that you have your product catalog at hand. We import this catalog directly from your webshop into Reloadify. Looking for product A with price A? Look it up under your products and easily drag it into your newsletter.

Always want your e-mail to be displayed correctly? Then include the 'online version' in your newsletter. Your customers can always click on it. Your newsletter will then appear in their address bar.

Best practices for your email template

Want your newsletter to stand out even more? Then quickly read the best practices for your newsletter template!

Best practice 1 for your email: create a strong subject line

The first thing your customer sees is your subject line. Get as creative as possible with your subject line. Why should your customers open your e-mail right now? In our help article you will find several tips specifically for subject lines with a high open rate.

Best practice 2 for your email: always use your pre-header

Your pre-header is the piece of text that comes after the subject line. If you do not actively fill in the pre-header, the e-mail client will automatically grab the first text in your e-mail.

A pre-header is important because it gives you a chance to use your copy to persuade customers to open the mail, proceed to purchase and so on. If you don't use this opportunity, it's actually a bit of a loss. Research has even shown that your open rate (opening percentage) is many times higher when you have a good pre-header set up. But of course you already expected that when you see the examples above!

Besides the fact that a better pre-header ensures a higher open rate, it has two other important advantages:

• Better (mobile) usability
• Fewer spam alerts

You can find more tips for filling in your snippet or pre-header here.

Best practice 3 for your email: Then leverage your USPs

Think of USPs such as: 'ordered today, delivered tomorrow', '180-day free return' or anything else you may excel at. This neatly breaks up your newsletter and, at the same time, highlights your business well. Do you consider it a USP that your customers can pay with iDEAL as well as afterwards, for example? Then highlight your payment methods using the corresponding icons.

Best practice 4 for your email: Socials in your newsletter

Are you active on social media with your business? Then it's a great opportunity to highlight your social media in your newsletter. You often do this in the footer. This way, your fan base grows. Or, give your customers a sneek peak of what your Instagram timeline looks like: make a mock-up of your Instagram to show your customers exactly what you have to offer on your social channels. The clearer this will be, the better your customer will know what to expect on your socials. Think new releases from a particular brand, a win action or just inspiration. Give your customer an incentive to want to follow you.

Best practice 5 for your email: Social proof in your newsletter

What often convinces customers to proceed to purchase is how other customers have experienced you as a company. For example, do you have good Google reviews or a good Trusted Shops rating? Be sure to share this in your newsletter! Customers are very sensitive to this. Because a good rating often equals good service. You often put this information in the footer of your newsletter. Be sure to link to your reviews, so your customers can see that the reviews are genuine.

Best practice 6 for your email: Alternate between text and images

Alternate your email well with both images and text. If your email consists of only images, chances are that you will be marked as spam. And that's a waste of the time you've put into your email template.

Best practice 7 for your email: optimize for each device

Reloadify automatically takes into account both desktop and mobile. The layout scales well to mobile, desktop or laptop. Every design is responsive! Your texts and images are displayed at the right size on mobile, and they change position, so the layout is ideal for a smaller screen. Does your content not look the way you want it to? No problem at all! With a click of a button, you switch the structure to the mobile view. Imagine: you have a text block, with the price on the left and your product image on the right. For a responsive design on your phone, this is how it will look: text block, price, product image. But maybe you just want a text block, product image and then the price. You can set this up to Reloadify with the click of a button. Do you want to fill out your complete newsletter differently on the phone than on desktop? No problem at all. With one click on the button you can hide specific elements for both mobile and desktop.

Best practice 8 for your email: Consider the right font

When you start working with different fonts, it is important to know what safe fonts and web fonts are.

Safe fonts, or email safe fonts, are fonts that are displayed on any computer or device. Examples are:

• Arial
• Helvetica
• Georgia
• Times New Roman
• Courier

Safe Fonts always display properly on any device when opening an e-mail.

Web fonts are fonts designed specifically for the web. They are slightly less reliable than safe fonts, but they can sometimes still be found on various devices. Web fonts were originally designed to be used exclusively on websites, so their licenses are usually only for use on websites and mobile applications. The reason why many services do not allow use in e-mail is that this is seen as distributing the font, which violates the end-user licence agreement (EULA) of many services.

Each provider has a different license required, so there is no standard way fonts are licensed in e-mail.

Web Fonts are fonts as:

• Open Sans
• Roboto
• Lato
• Ludica Sans
• Bitter
• Droid Serif
• Montserrat
• Ubuntu
• Karla
• Bree Serif
• Muli
• Inter
• Oswalt
• Abril
• Poppins
• Heebo
• Exo
• Arimo
• Saira
• Raleway
• Cinzel
• Comfortaa
• Bebas Neue
• Etc.

There are many more such fonts. All Google Fonts are also Web Fonts.

These fonts (web fonts) are sometimes not displayed properly in an e-mail. This is because the device on which the e-mail is opened does not recognize the font.

Best practice 9 for your email: Save your email template

Are you satisfied with your email template? Then easily save your email template to use it again next time. Or, duplicate your sent email to a new email to use the template again. This will save you time.

Best practice 10 for your email: use moving images

It has been proven that moving images are remembered better than a still image. Make use of GIFs of your product or video. This way you keep your customer's attention longer, resulting in higher engagement with your newsletter.

Best practice 11 for your email: Determine the order of your email

Think carefully about the order of your email. Do you want to put important brands at the top or strategically at the bottom so that your customers are forced to scroll down? There is no right or wrong here, it's just what your customers are looking for.

Best practice 12 for your email: Always A/B test your email

Do you really want to know what motivates your customers to proceed to purchase? Then I advise you to always test this in an A/B test. Test your content, your subject line or your pre-header. What resonates the most for which target audience? Learn from this! Want to know how to set up an A/B test? Then check out this article on setting up an A/B test.

After reading this article, you'll be ready to create a killer newsletter, with a great email template that you can reuse again and again. You know how to set up an email, what exactly should be in an email and what to look out for in terms of content. Good luck with your newsletter!