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“Growing your newsletter will be an ongoing learning experience: analyze, reflect, iterate—and remain flexible to adapting your goals based on what resonates most with your subscribers.”
This insight from How to Create a Newsletter: Best Practices and Examples Guide inspired tryandreply.email. From the original concept of a real-time email experiment to developing the sign-up and welcome series experience, this 4-step blueprint to launch your newsletter provides the foundation to get started.
Let’s walk through each step of the 4-step blueprint to launch your newsletter.
Step 1: Define Your Goals
Step 2: Know Your Audience
Step 3: Set Your Cadence
Step 4: Measure Performance
Step 1: Define Your Goals
What do you want to accomplish with your newsletter?
A newsletter can serve many purposes, but identifying your unique “why” is key.
After two decades partnering with companies—from startups to global leaders—I’ve learned to engage prospects and sustain customer relationships through email, but it hasn’t been without hurdles.
Testing new ideas can be challenging due to:
- Disconnects between internal teams
- Unclear campaign goals
- Outdated strategies and process
- Hesitation to try new approaches
- Insufficient data and technology
The “why” behind tryandreply.email is simple: it’s a real-time, collaborative experiment created to test and validate email marketing strategies, tools, and trends, with the goal of uncovering what truly works and sharing those insights transparently.
By involving subscribers and using their feedback, tryandreply.email creates a dynamic learning environment. Industry professionals and email enthusiasts actively contribute to discovering what works. This makes it both an educational tool and a live lab for real-time email strategy refinement.
Step 2: Know Your Audience
Who is this newsletter for?
Craft a sentence or two that clearly defines your ideal subscriber. This description will guide your content and marketing efforts.
The tryandreply.email ideal subscriber is a hands-on marketer, strategist, creative, or email enthusiast.
Whether you’re an expert or just starting out, you’ll gain actionable insights.
You’ll also have the opportunity to engage with tactics and tools and share your feedback and interpretation of the results.
This approach reinforces the value of having a blueprint to launch your newsletter that is tailored to a specific audience.
Step 3: Set Your Cadence
When will you send your newsletter?
Newsletter success requires consistency. Whether your content is from your team or external sources, keep it engaging and valuable.
For tryandreply.email, quality comes first.
I aim to send two emails per month, each focusing on a specific topic—tool, tactic, or trend in email marketing.
Subscribers can participate in the featured tests and reply.
Engagement results will be presented in a dashboard-like format, providing transparent data and insights for subscribers to interpret and share their thoughts.
Having a structured framework for your newsletter helps to maintain focus on quality over quantity.
Step 4: Measure Performance
How will you know if your newsletter is engaging?
The more you measure, the more insights you’ll gain. Establishing your own benchmarks is crucial for defining the success of your niche newsletter.
- Each clickable element will be tracked with UTM (Urchin Tracking Modules) parameters.
- Engagement metrics from the ESP will provide additional insights. Key metrics include open rates, click-through rates, and reply rates.
- By obtaining feedback from subscribers, a clearer understanding of what resonates and the reasons behind it will be gained through qualitative insights.
This blend of data and feedback makes tryandreply.email unique—a live experiment and learning resource for improving email marketing.
Next Step: Email Service Provider (ESP)
Which platform will you use?
Selecting an ESP depends on your goals. Small businesses and large organizations have different needs.
I have hands-on experience leading and executing email campaigns across a range of platforms, from free tools to enterprise-level systems. This includes Salesforce products like Marketing Cloud (SFMC) and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (fka Pardot), as well as SharpSpring from Constant Contact, iContact, and Klaviyo.
For this experiment, I chose Mailchimp. It’s user-friendly and great for beginners, with features like automation and a drag-and-drop builder.
I’ll share more about how I use Mailchimp for tryandreply.email, but keep in mind, your ESP should align with your email strategy.
Ready to Launch Your Newsletter?
Share what you try and leave a reply!
