Length Matters: How Long Should Your Newsletter Be?

Newsletters are some of the most effective and cost-efficient marketing tools around. Unlike printed newsletters several decades back, today’s newsletters usually come in digital formats. +

Target Audience

These marketing tools are able to reach more of their target audience. Key, for a truly engaging newsletter is to keep it at the right length. It needs to be just long enough to keep your audience engaged.+

Five hundred words

For most experts, the rule of thumb is to have about five hundred words. So a page length would thus be a right for for the reader to quickly skim through. Keep in mind that modern audiences have very short attention spans. Don't expect they will take a seat and sit hours reading and re-reading your newsletter. Make sure your writing is concise and to the point. Yet, interesting and engaging.+

Objective of the newsletter

Your writing style depends on the objective of your newsletter. You can achieve a number of goals with this marketing information tool. Initiating a regular contact with prospective customers, informing customers with new blog content, inviting subscribers to new learning opportunities such as webinars and online courses. You can use different types of newsletters to achieve these goals.+

Take a look at the following

Teaser newsletter.
This type of newsletter is primarily used to grab the attention of blog readers. If you are a blog writer and you want more people head over to your website, advertise your blog would the way to do this. You stir the interest of the readers and then to lead them via a “read more” to the actually content on your website. A compelling offer in your opening paragraph to entice the reader is mandatory to have them click the link to your website.
Product offer newsletter.
Is the kind of newsletter where you would make the reader want to try out an offer. Resist the urge to sound like a brochure though. And make it short and clear. Introduce your product and convince the readers that they can experience the benefits it offers. Elicit an urge to buy and include a link to the product page.
Single topic newsletter.
This usually focuses on one topic only. As such, it goes on at length to cover everything in one issue. There is usually no need to include links in the article to other sites. From marketing perspective it is recommended not to use this type of newsletter.

Newsletter format

Your newsletter can be formatted in http, pdf, or plain text. So format will be determined based on the type of your newsletter and objective. It would not be effective to use a plain text format for a product newsletter that’s intended to be a follow through for a launch campaign. Http and pdf formats allow you to make use of graphics and color. Http formatting however, requires some technical skills.
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KEY TAKEAWAY

There are self-help tutorials and experts who can help you out with these for an affordable price and even for free.

Length of your newsletter matters and so do the elements within your newsletter. Consider your audience when determining what to include in your newsletter. Independent of length, make sure your newsletter is worth reading.