A digital newsletter is a great way for businesses to communicate with their audience, build customer trust, and drive sales, all at the same time. Yet, a lot of companies ignore the opportunities a newsletter offers or struggle to make a digital newsletter that won’t end up deleted before it’s read.
Why is it so great to have an online newsletter for your company? How do you create a newsletter that won’t be a waste of time and effort of your marketing team and will propel your business forward instead?
In this article, we answer both of these questions and provide six easy steps for swift and simple digital newsletter creation.
What Is an Online Newsletter?
An online (or digital, or virtual) newsletter is an electronic publication that most commonly serves as a way for a business or organization to inform its customers, members, or employees of its recent activities. Newsletters usually contain news, product updates, tips, or any other information that is relevant and useful to its audience.
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Before we start on how to create a newsletter online, let’s talk a little about why you should consider creating one.
Why Is It a Good Choice to Start a Newsletter?
The value of building a virtual newsletter can be easily overlooked. Social media marketing has become a universally preferred method of communication with an audience, so much so that a lot of companies simply stop at that. Yet, an efficient online newsletter is capable of generating no less or even more customer engagement as well as actually increasing sales.
There are at least five solid reasons why you should consider making a digital newsletter for your business or non-profit organization:
- you increase traffic to your website by linking back to it from your newsletter;
- you can sell ad space in your newsletter to interested parties or you can advertise your partners;
- you get to promote your new products or developments in a more thorough and engaging way than Twitter or Instagram allow;
- your audience remains more involved and stimulated since they hear from you regularly and stay informed on what you’re up to;
- you build customer trust by establishing your brand voice and nurturing your readers’ familiarity with it.
If all of this sounds like something you’d want for your company, let’s move on to what digital format is optimal for creating newsletters online.
The Best Format for Your Online Newsletter
The two most commonplace formats of an online newsletter are email newsletters and PDF newsletters. But both of these formats are far from perfect. An email newsletter can’t be longer than a couple of pages and a PDF newsletter needs to be downloaded before it can be read. They lack in looks and interactivity, therefore they’re less likely to engage a reader. And if there is a typo or any kind of mix-up requiring a fix, both PDF and email newsletters have to be re-sent.
That’s why in our guide on how to create a newsletter online we’ll focus on a better, more forward-looking solution that solves all of the aforementioned problems—a flipbook newsletter.
A flipbook newsletter is an HTML5 publication that doesn’t require downloading—you can share it via a link or a QR code, and even embed it in a web page. Just like that:
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Online newsletters are interactive and easy to update as well. A reader will see the new version under the same link, so you don’t need to re-send anything.
Let’s see how easy it is to create an online newsletter with the FlippingBook newsletter-making tool.
How to Make a Newsletter Online
Step #1: Decide on the Strategy
Before creating a newsletter, you need to decide what you’re going to write about. You may have a lot of topics you want to cover but if you go for all of them in one issue, you’ll end up confusing your reader. What we suggest is compartmentalization. For example, you can make shorter newsletters on product updates and offers whenever they happen, longer ones on product tips once a month, and more substantial, multi-chaptered newsletters on everything else (news, interviews, conferences, reader feedback, etc.) once a quarter. That way, you will be able to plan your content delivery ahead and avoid overwhelming your reader.
Step #2: Create Your First Issue
Now that you’ve decided on the topics of the newsletter, you can move to the creation of its first issue. Studies show that interactive content gains two times more engagement, so don’t hesitate to fill your newsletter with different types of compelling copy, dynamic videos, and vibrant visuals—everything to make your reader want to keep reading.
When you’ve got everything ready, create a PDF of your first issue. No, we’re not creating a PDF newsletter here but we’ll need it in our next step. If you’re new to professional PDF creation, you may find our list of the best PDF-creating tools for non-designers handy.
Pro tip: Familiar with Canva? Use editable online newsletter templates we’ve prepared:
- company/business newsletter template
- real estate newsletter template
- school newsletter template
- church newsletter template
Add a digital newsletter template to your Canva account and customize it to your liking. Our tips within the templates on how to make a newsletter online may help you through the process.
When your e-newsletter is good to go, you can send it directly to FlippingBook for further conversion. If you don’t have a FlippingBook account yet, don’t worry—a trial account will be created for you automatically. This way, you can skip Step #3 altogether.
Step #3: Convert It Into a Flipbook Newsletter
Now that you’ve got a PDF version of your online newsletter on your hands, it’s time to turn it into a digital flipbook. Create a FlippingBook account by starting a free trial—it’s a quick and straightforward process, with no card details required. Then just upload your PDF to the FlippingBook converter, and your flipbook newsletter will be ready shortly.
Step #4: Brand Your Newsletter And Add Interactivity
Now that you’ve converted your PDF to a flipbook newsletter, you can make the most of it. Insert videos, links, image galleries, and GIFs into the pages of your newsletter to make it even more engaging. Change the background, color palette, logo, and favicon to complement your content and make your newsletter part of your brand: it’s no secret that brand recognition helps increase customer trust, and this is what we set out to do here. Add a lead capture form—you can use it either to make the subscription process easy for new leads or to give your readers a simple feedback tool.
Step #5: Share It Any Way You Prefer
The beauty of making your online newsletter into a flipbook is that you can share it any way you like. Send it as a link, and your reader will be able to open it in a click. Embed it into a website, and everyone who visits it can flip through your newsletter without leaving the page. Add a QR code of your online newsletter to its printed copy or any of your marketing materials, and people can scan it and view it right away.
Pro tip: If you’re going to distribute your digital newsletter via email and you’d rather have a preview than just a link, you can insert a nice picture or GIF of your flipbook with a hyperlink. This way, your reader will be captivated by your newsletter’s rich visuals even before they open it!
Step #6: Analyze Your Newsletter Performance
As the FlippingBook newsletter maker provides thorough analytics for every flipbook you create, you can easily evaluate how your online newsletter performs. What issues have been viewed the most? What pages? What links have been clicked more often than others? You can analyze all these data and more to make your digital newsletter even better. You can also provide your partners with a thorough report on their ad performance.
These are our six steps of simple online newsletter creation. We hope you’ll find them helpful and impress your readers with your own beautiful digital newsletter in no time!
