Mistakes to Avoid When Sending Out Newsletters
By now, we hope you know that having a newsletter for your radio station has many benefits and can create value for your radio station, let us share advice on the five common mistakes to avoid when creating and sending out newsletters for your radio station.
- Not maintaining consistency – When your listeners subscribe to your newsletter, it is important for you to communicate how often you will send out the newsletter and be consistent with the frequency you would have communicated.
- Buying email lists – If you think buying email lists will increase your listener base quicker, you are wrong. Most people do not want to receive communications they did not consent to and will ignore your mail. More so, email service providers and hosting companies can block you for spamming the recipients.
- Making It difficult to unsubscribe – If your newsletters do not contain an unsubscribe link, you are violating the right of the recipient to opt out when they want to. By doing so, you run the risk of being considered a spammer and you can get blacklisted by hosting platforms. To avoid that, you need to include an unsubscribe link in every email and make it easy to access.
- Too much content – No one wants to read too much content, so streamlining your content to short, precise and valuable text is more beneficial for your readers. You also need to avoid using continuous paragraphs, without breaks in-between. Make use of short paragraphs, bullet points, numbers, images and more to improve the readability of your content.
- Irrelevant content – Remember your newsletter is for radio listeners, so providing relevant content is key. More so, do not turn your newsletter into a channel to oversell yourself, this tends to turn off your readers.
- Excluding the call to action – Your call to action is what you want your radio newsletter subscribers to do once they open the email. Whether it is tuning into your station, participating in a competition, writing a review about your station, or visiting a certain link, you need to make this clear in your newsletter.
- Disregarding mobile readers – A lot of people now use their mobile devices to check their emails, meaning your radio station newsletter must be readable and look good on mobile phones. If your newsletter is not readable on a mobile device, you will lose a lot of listener subscribers.
- Not reviewing your newsletter – If you are going to send a newsletter, make sure you review the content of your newsletter, including the text, links, and layout. Sending your listeners an amateur-looking newsletter full of typos can be a major turn off for your readers. Sending yourself a test to your own email address is an effective way of proofreading your newsletter.
- Ignoring Personalization – No one wants to feel just like any other ordinary customer. Addressing a person by their name makes your customer feel special, increasing the open rate of your email and engagement. You can include personalization both in the subject line and in your introduction text. Most mailing systems on the market, such as MailChimp, have the ability to personalize bulk emails, if you upload your mailing lists including your listeners’ first names. According to Campaign Monitor, personalized emails are proven to increase open rates and drive revenue by as much as 760%. More so, personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.
If you avoid these common mistakes and focus on ways to boost your click-through rates, you will effectively use your radio station newsletter to increase listener engagement, build trust, and drive traffic to your radio station. Looking to create your own newsletter, click here to learn more.
