Article

Stefania Goldman
Stefania Goldman 6 March 2017

How To Make Subscribers Forward Your Newsletters

Whether you’re just starting out or whether you are an established business, you probably would like to expand your email list. The question is: how do you do it? This blog post aims to show you four tips on how to make subscribers forward your newsletters.

Whether you’re just starting out or whether you are an established business, you probably would like to expand your email list. One way is to create more ads (and spend more money) and then heavily incentivize your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. Another way is to get people to share your email campaigns. The question is: how do you do it? This blog post aims to show you four tips on how to make subscribers forward your newsletters.

1. Send a triggered or segmented newsletter

With inboxes becoming more and more crowded, nobody has the time to go through every single email they receive, especially when it comes to promotional content.
If your content is irrelevant, your emails will get less opens and eventually people will unsubscribe from your email list. If you don’t want this to happen to you, you need to send targeted emails. A subscriber that receives a message based on their recent behavior will find your email relevant and therefore will be incentivized to share important news with the others.
If you are only starting out and have a relatively small email list, we’ve got some good news for you. Small or niche brands find it easier to produce relevant content as they know their subscribers better than big enterprises with thousands of subscribers.

How to Make It Work

If you’re wondering how to send targeted and relevant emails, here’s what you need to do:

1. Segment your email list based on characteristic traits, such as location. If you’re wondering how can you segment your email list for more opens, you should check out this blog post that contains 17 tips for email segmentation.
2. Set up triggered messages so that you can quickly respond to subscriber behaviors, as downloading a whitepaper or abandoning a cart. Here you can learn more about trigger emails.

2. Personalize the content

Personalized content is what your subscribers enjoy reading. How to you produce it? There’s much more to personalization than a first name tag. If you’d like to send highly personal emails, you need to ask the right questions on the signup site and then track your subscribers’ behavior (such as buying frequency). However, you don’t need to perform a time-consuming analysis to create a highly shareable email. Let’s say you’ve recently run an event for your subscribers. All you need to do is a send a follow up email with great pictures. People are very likely to share that kind of newsletter because it saves them from the pain of saving the pictures and attaching them to multiple people.

How to Make It Work

1. Update your signup form. Make sure you start gathering relevant data about your customers from day one. Depending on the nature of your business, you might want to ask them about their purchase interest, educational level, job title and so on.

2. The more you learn about your subscribers, the more personalized content can you offer. Do you know where they are located? What is their purchase cycle? Have you noticed a change in their buying behavior? Do they also make in-store purchases?

3. Ask subscribers to it share

The best way to make subscribers forward your newsletters is to ask them to do so with a social sharing button.
With more than 50% of subscribers reading your email on a mobile device on the go, you need to make sure you explicitly ask your audience to share the email and ensure this call to action is clearly visible.

How to Make It Work

1. You might want to dedicate a specific part of an email to make subscribers forward your newsletters and tell them why you’d like to do them so. Alternatively, you can just insert a call to action.

2. Before you do that, you need to make sharing easy. If you go for a CTA, be sure it’s touch-friendly. It’s also advisable to have Facebook posts, tweets and emails pre-populated with content. Then all you ask your reader to do is to click.

4. Create a naturally shareable content

Some emails are naturally more shareable than others. Below you will find a few types of emails that will make subscribers forward your newsletters.

News and Helpful Content

Exciting news and updates as well as helpful content are frequently shared, especially when your subscriber knows what is in it for them in the new update. When writing about a new product or service, try to showcase as many advantages as you can without sounding too salesy. After all, you’d like to come across as a thought leader in your field who is mindful of their network and tries to help by showcasing certain products.

Account Changes

Email campaigns featuring important information, such as account changes is likely to make subscribers forward your newsletters. People like to be helpful and are keen to share information with others who might be affected by the changes.

Events

Usually people don’t feel like attending an event on their own, therefore they are likely to share an event invitation email with their friends or colleagues.

Fundraising and Charity Business

Charitable and fundraising initiatives are also likely to be shared often. Nearly everyone likes to inform their friends about their contributions as well as share the newsletter to help the cause.

Conclusion

A high open rate isn’t everything. When your reader forwards your newsletter campaigns, they expand your reach. At the same time, they help you boost your conversion rate as well as improve email engagement. Obviously, this is great news as far as revenue, branding, and deliverability is concerned.

The less promotional you sound in your newsletters, the higher chance you’ll make subscribers forward your newsletters. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to sell your product. You just need to be smart about it and sell it indirectly. This blog post will show you how to sell without sounding too salesy.

If you have any other tips that are likely to get subscribers forward emails, feel free to share it in the comment section.

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