Nurture examples that convert newsletter readers: a fishing story
Many organizations create newsletter emails to encourage their customers to engage with their products, sign up for webinars, read gated articles, hopefully buy something, or other campaigns. If the newsletter provides the right nurture (nudge), the company generally gets more revenue. So how do you convert recipients from disinterested to engaged? Great copy and thoughtful user journeys are the ticket.
Nurture comes in many forms: newsletters, emails, in-product messaging, and social media. To keep it simple, I’ll use “newsletter” as shorthand for any type of nurture.
I’m going to use a surprising example to show what a great newsletter does and how it does it.
A fishing story
I bought my first fishing license in late May. They sent me three nurture newsletters to get me successful with fishing (adoption!). I recommend you open new tabs to see the first and final newsletters. (Uh-oh, the second one didn’t include a “view on web” link).
Let’s break down what worked in these newsletters:
- Personalization and segmentation: Take a look at how the content is about “new to fishing” because I didn’t have a fishing license before.
- Balance of content between fun to know and the CTA (call to action): In this case, the emotional CTA was “protect the fishery.” As tempting as it is to lead with “buy-buy-buy” type messaging, your engagement will improve if you provide content that’s of interest to your users (and, your CTA is not always that!).
- Timeliness related to the user journey: I got three emails spaced out within a month of my license purchase. Each CTA and user journey will have its own timeline. So, don’t try to nurture someone into something that they’re not yet ready for. In this fishing example, most newbies aren’t likely to be fishing multiple times in the first week. Instead, they might fish a couple times over a few weeks, if they’re lucky enough to get out on the water.
- Why the purchase matters: The content should reinforce the payoffs that a customer gets from the product. In my fishing example, there’s a blurb about how license fees support future fishing and wildlife in Texas.
- Continued engagement: It’s easy to overlook, but don’t forget to give your readers a way to provide feedback and share with others. The bottom of the fishing newsletters had links to their socials (but not on all, maybe an oversight). And just recently I received an email survey asking about my experience with Texas Parks and Wildlife.
- Layout: It goes without saying that your layout design should be easy-to-read in email or on a webpage (mobile and desktop). Many nurture platforms like Braze or Marketo have built-in templates and also storage for your custom layout. I’m wondering if the fishing newsletter didn’t always use a template, which was evidenced by inconsistent elements: “view on web” link, missing social tiles, and different footers. You can lose credibility when you have a non-professional and inconsistent look/feel.
So I hope you think of this blog the next time you’re planning a newsletter and hoping your customers won’t hit the Delete button. Good luck while you’re fishing for engagement, and as always share your tips too.
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