Newslet­ters are among the most com­mon mar­ket­ing emails, but one of the hard­est to do well. Many lack tru­ly valu­able con­tent and are left unread in the inbox, then even­tu­al­ly ban­ished to the land of unsub­scribes. But done cor­rect­ly, newslet­ters are a high­ly-effec­tive way to nur­ture leads, increase cus­tomer loy­al­ty, and dri­ve traf­fic to your web­site. By incor­po­rat­ing tools like automa­tion and con­tex­tu­al­ly rel­e­vant mes­sag­ing, you can turn the aver­age newslet­ter into a pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing tool.

Here are five tips to help you cre­ate email newslet­ters that will turn your sub­scribers into loy­al cus­tomers.

1. Keep It Fresh

Six­ty per­cent of mar­keters strug­gle to offer real-time, per­son­al­ized con­tent, but the major­i­ty believes it’s cru­cial to an effec­tive email strat­e­gy, accord­ing to Adobe research. The chal­lenge? Infor­ma­tion changes quick­ly, so by the time you hit “send,” the con­tent may be out­dat­ed. Many busi­ness­es push out time sen­si­tive con­tent via their blog or social chan­nels, but email has far greater reach than social media and most busi­ness blogs. In fact, when choos­ing to receive com­pa­ny updates, only 10 per­cent of cus­tomers elect­ed to do so through Face­book, while 90 per­cent opt­ed for a newslet­ter. How can you lever­age email’s reach and pro­vide read­ers with up-to-date con­tent? Web crop­ping lets you pull live con­tent direct­ly from your web­site into your emails. When you update your site, the con­tent auto­mat­i­cal­ly updates in the email — even when it’s already in your subscriber’s inbox. For exam­ple, you can web crop arti­cles from your site to pull an up-to-the-minute news feed into your newslet­ter. This also saves pro­duc­tion time, elim­i­nat­ing the need to dupli­cate efforts and cre­ate new con­tent for both your site and newslet­ter.

2. Optimize For Mobile

To tru­ly meet read­ers where they are, make design for mobile a pri­or­i­ty. Accord­ing to our data, 68 per­cent of opens and 47 per­cent of email con­ver­sions hap­pened on mobile devices in 2015, and if your sub­scribers open your newslet­ter on mobile, they won’t read it unless it’s mobile-friend­ly. Accord­ing to Unbounce, 75 per­cent of sub­scribers may delete a non-mobile opti­mized email. Respon­sive tem­plates require you to import HTML code that detects the subscriber’s device and adjusts the email in real time. Imple­ment­ing respon­sive design can be a chal­lenge, but with the right tech­nol­o­gy, you can import and con­vert con­tent into a ful­ly respon­sive HTML file. You can also export your HTML tem­plate by copy­ing and past­ing, down­load­ing the file, or for­ward­ing it as an email. But respon­sive design is just the begin­ning. Use device detec­tion to offer the appro­pri­ate app ver­sion to down­load (iTunes or Google Play) based on the device your read­er is using at the moment – all with one click. Reduc­ing steps increas­es the like­li­hood sub­scribers will fol­low through, and device detec­tion is proven to sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase mobile app down­loads.

3. Make It Relevant With Geotargeting

Con­tent that speaks to each indi­vid­ual sub­scriber is what sets great newslet­ters apart from the ordi­nary. You can tar­get recip­i­ents with con­tent that’s rel­e­vant to them on many lev­els – loca­tion, weath­er, time, and per­son­al pref­er­ences. Geo­tar­get­ing boosts click-through rates and allows you to send con­tent based on where sub­scribers are locat­ed the moment they open the email, not just where they live. Use geo­tar­get­ing to point out the near­est phys­i­cal store, local sales, or area events. Cus­tomers are more like­ly to share their loca­tion if reward­ed with con­ve­nience, coupons, or loy­al­ty points. Geo­tar­get­ing adds tremen­dous val­ue, giv­en that it can increase click-through rates from the stan­dard 1.5 — 3.5 per­cent to 13 per­cent. Using geo­tar­get­ing ensures rel­e­vance that yields a bet­ter reten­tion rate over the long-term, mak­ing read­ers and mar­keters hap­py.

4. Share Your Most Popular Content

Every mar­keter knows the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing con­sis­tent and valu­able con­tent. One effec­tive trick is to use con­tent you already know per­forms well and extend its reach to your newslet­ter. If con­tent is pop­u­lar on your site, mea­sured by social shares or com­ments, it’s like­ly your sub­scribers will also find it use­ful. You can auto­mat­i­cal­ly pull your most pop­u­lar con­tent into your newslet­ter with web crop­ping, and the arti­cles will update as new arti­cles are post­ed and shared. Besides pro­vid­ing con­tent you know works – hot off the press – anoth­er big advan­tage is time saved. Few­er resources are spent research­ing and devel­op­ing con­tent top­ics, and there’s no addi­tion­al pro­duc­tion and approval time. Con­tent is cre­at­ed once, and used both on your web­site and in emails.

5. Automate Daily Specials

For dai­ly newslet­ters that make time­ly con­tent a core com­po­nent – whether it’s news, a sched­ul­ing inter­face, or live inven­to­ry – dri­ving your emails with APIs is a great way to offer use­ful, per­son­al­ized mes­sag­ing. With API inte­gra­tion, you can pop­u­late your newslet­ter with the most up-to-date offers or news con­tent. Accord­ing to Exper­ian, emails that offer spe­cial deals have up to 48 per­cent high­er rev­enue than oth­er pro­mo­tion­al emails. Mar­keters can set up the struc­ture of the email and rely on their API to deliv­er real-time data and cre­ate instant, auto­mat­ic updates – regard­less of when the recip­i­ent opens the newslet­ter. Once again, with­out the need to research, cre­ate, and sched­ule fresh con­tent, then wait on approvals, mar­keters spend less time and get far bet­ter results.

Final Thought: Hit Send

You should aim to pro­vide val­ue with each send that speaks to every sub­scriber on an indi­vid­ual lev­el – wher­ev­er they are. That can mean where they are in the pur­chase fun­nel, which device they’re on, or even where they are on the plan­et. Your newslet­ter needs to be rel­e­vant, and the sto­ry it tells must mat­ter to your sub­scribers. The abil­i­ty to cre­ate a per­fect newslet­ter isn’t lim­it­ed to your resources. Tools like web-crop­ping, APIs, and device detec­tion can auto­mat­i­cal­ly pull in con­tent read­ers will val­ue, with a lot less work on your part. All you have to do is use the right con­tex­tu­al tools to take your newslet­ter from ordi­nary to amaz­ing. Then sit back and let it do the work for you.