How to Use Newsletters to Build and Retain Customers 

Whether you’re running a business or growing a personal brand, newsletters help keep your audience engaged, drive consistent traffic to your content and most importantly, build lasting relationships with your audience.  

When done right, they connect, convert and build long-term loyalty. 

So how do you create a newsletter that people actually look forward to opening?  

What makes a great newsletter? 

A good newsletter should consist of unique, informative and engaging content while being easily readable, well-designed and delivered in a personal way to your intended audience.  

Here are 6 key qualities of a high-performing newsletter: 

A clear purpose

The purpose should guide the content and design of your newsletter to ensure it effectively communicates and engages with your audience. Question are you educating? Entertaining? Promoting? Or all three perhaps. 

Example: 

Morning Brew offer a great example of delivering clear purpose through their newsletter, to continually educate and inform busy professionals with a quick, witty roundup of the day’s top business and tech news. 

Valuable content  

Your newsletter should offer valuable content your audience can’t get from you elsewhere, while serving directly to their interests. Think: 

• Exclusive tips 

• Sales, promotions or early access 

• Exclusive subscriber content  

• Industry insights  

• Product updates  

• Curated resources  

Example:  

Award-winning newsletter from Huckberry offers valuable content throughout their newsletter, with exclusive tips and inspiration; offering style advice, adventure stories and gear recommendations tailored to their audience’s lifestyle. They also offer sales, promotions and regular subscriber-only deals including early access to product drops and limited-time offers. Along with Subscriber-exclusive content and curated resources. 

Audience Focused 

Make sure your content is relevant to your target audience. It’s easy to get lost in what you, as a business, needs to sell or market. Instead, focus on what your readers want to hear about. 

Think about the readers needs, not just company updates and ask yourself: “Will the reader care about this?” 

Example: 

Grammarly’s Weekly Insights email focus on addressing their readers needs by sharing personalised content with tailored feedback based on the user’s recent writing activity like productivity stats and their most common grammar issues. They focus their content on being helpful, not “salesy.” With emails often linking to writing tips, style guides or productivity advice; content the user is likely to find useful and actionable. 

Visual and Engaging 

A newsletter should be visual, fun and engaging.  

Adding in visual elements keeps your audience excited and engaged, as more often than not, the reader will just be skim-reading through the newsletter.  

Try adding: 

• Short-form videos 

• GIFs  

• Graphics 

• Thumbnail links to your blog or YouTube channel 

Example:  

Buzzfeed’s newsletter nails visual engagement by delivering easily digestible content in an easy-to-read format. It grabs readers attention with GIFs and memes, while bold visuals and pop culture images help to break up the text. Thumbnail links are also used throughout and a focus on bite-sized copy and minimal text blocks helps the newsletter stay highly visual, engaging and easy to skim-read. 

The Right Frequency  

Once a week newsletters works for some businesses, just as well as once-a-month newsletters work for others.  

Your industry niche, location and audience will all have an impact on what email frequency will work best for your newsletter. Check out reports from InboxAlly or Beehiiv to get a better understanding of what frequency will work for you. If you have more time, test around with different frequencies and monitor opens and click rates. It’s important to strike the right balance between familiarity and curiosity.  

Example: 

The Skimm is a newsletter brand dedicated to keeping women informed about the day’s top news and cultural highlights. Its main publication, ‘The Daily Skimm’, delivers a concise, easy-to-read roundup of the most important stories every morning. In addition, newsletters like ‘Skimm Well + Good’ and ‘Skimm Sports’ provide weekly deep dives into wellness and sports. They’ve understood the necessary frequency for each newsletter based on their audience’s preferences, delivering daily content where timeliness and immediacy matter most, and opting for weekly editions for topics of less importance. 

Curating your newsletter: what to include 

When you being curating your newsletter, keep these 10 elements in mind to ensure maximum success. 

1. Compelling subject line: Tease the content that’s inside to spark curiosity. Mailjet has a great guide on the do’s and don’ts for compelling subject lines. 

2. Featured content: Start with the most compelling and exciting content to feature at the top of your newsletter to spark immediate interest. 

3. Visual graphics: Use graphics, images, videos or GIFs to keep viewers engaged.  

4. Clean layout: Keep the layout clean and organised to make it easy to read through. 

5. Minimal text: Don’t overload your newsletter with text, focus on short and engaging descriptions.  

6. Clear CTAS: Direct viewers to each article with a clear CTA. 

7. Reduce promotions: Keep promotional content under 10% of your newsletter. Focus on value content instead.  

8. Social links: Make it easy for readers to follow you on other platforms.  

9. Unsubscribe button: Allow subscribers to easily opt-out if they want. 

10. Feedback: Ask your readers what they want to see more of, helping to nurture a community. 
     

What should be included in a newsletter?

The key is to mix value with variety. You want your readers to feel like each newsletter is worth their time whether they’re there to learn, discover or simply stay updated.  

Here’s a breakdown of content types that consistently perform well and help build stronger customer relationships: 

• Blog posts: Share your latest or most relevant blog posts to drive traffic back to your site. 

• Company updates: Share company milestones, upcoming changes or a peek into your creative process. This will make your audience feel like insiders. 

• How-to guides: Position yourself as a helpful expert. Share tutorials, how-to guides, FAQs and tips that help your audience. 

• Testimonials and case studies: Feature real customer stories, testimonials or case studies that highlight success with your product or service. Read more on the importance of sharing social proof here.

• Competitions and Giveaways: Nothing boosts engagement like a chance to win something! Promote giveaways and competitions directly through your newsletter. 
   

• Industry news: Share any relevant trending news in your industry. This positions your newsletter as a go-to resource, even when it’s not just about you. 
   

• Event announcements: Let your newsletter subscribers be the first to know of any events you will be attending or sponsoring.  

💡 Tip: Every industry has its own style and approach to newsletters. One of the best ways to gather inspiration is to subscribe to your competitors’ newsletters. Pay attention to what they include, the type of content they share, the frequency of their emails and how they engage their audience. 

FOSS apps for building & sending emails  

Consider using free open-source tools like Listmonk or SendPortal to build, manage, and send email campaigns giving you full control. 

ListMonk 

Listmonk is a , self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager. It’s designed to handle large volumes of emails quickly, making it great for businesses or creators who want full control over their subscriber data and sending process. 

Key features include:  

• Subscriber management with tags, custom fields, and import/export 

• Campaign builder with Markdown and HTML support 

• Advanced segmentation and targeting 

• Email previews with test sends 

• Reports on delivery, open, and click-through rates 

• SMTP integration (Amazon SES, Mailgun, Postmark etc.) 

SendPortal 

SendPortal is a self-hosted email marketing platform that focuses on subscriber and campaign management, with a user-friendly dashboard. It’s built with Laravel and ideal for teams that want to manage newsletters without monthly SaaS fees. 

Key features include:  

• Drag-and-drop email editor or custom HTML 

• List and tag management 

• Campaign creation and scheduling 

• SMTP integration (Amazon SES, Mailgun, etc.) 

• Detailed analytics (opens, clicks, bounces) 

• Multi-tenant support (for agencies managing clients) 

Some other notable options to check out include Keila, Notifuse and Mail Train. 

Final thoughts  

Newsletters are a direct link to your most loyal and engaged audience. When you consistently provide value, keep things fun and personal and listen to your readers, your newsletter becomes a powerful tool to build and retain loyal customers.