Creating a newsletter can help you engage your audience, boost sales, and share important updates. A well-crafted newsletter doesn’t just inform your customers — it builds connections. With their power to build loyalty and deliver results, newsletters are an indispensable tool for growth.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the 10 simple steps to create an email newsletter today. We’ll also share practical tips on how to make high-converting newsletters, including access to free templates from Omnisend to get started right away.
Elevate your email marketing strategy with powerful tools and beautiful templates
An email newsletter is a message sent regularly to a list of subscribers via email. It typically contains curated content like news updates, product information, promotional offers, and educational articles. Businesses use newsletters to engage with their audience, build brand loyalty, and drive specific actions such as website visits or purchases.
Email newsletters can be tailored to suit different goals and audiences, making them a versatile marketing tool. Whether you want to educate, engage, promote, or inform, choosing the right format helps you provide value while staying aligned with your brand’s objectives. Here are common types of email newsletters you can create:
Educational/How-to guides: Provides tips, tutorials, or guides to educate subscribers on a specific topic or product usage. Useful for establishing authority and offering value beyond promotions.
Content roundup: Curates articles, blog posts, or videos from a website or across the web. Ideal for keeping subscribers updated on industry news or trending topics.
Promotional offers: Includes discounts, special offers, and limited-time deals. Aimed at driving sales by encouraging immediate action from subscribers.
Event announcements: Used to promote upcoming events, such as webinars, conferences, or product launches. Helps generate awareness and registrations.
Product updates: Highlight new products, features, or services. Often used by SaaS companies to keep customers informed about improvements and launches.
Newsletter digest: Combines various content types, such as articles, events, and promotions, in a single email. Often sent on a regular schedule to engage subscribers with diverse content.
Customer success stories: Highlights case studies, testimonials, or stories about how customers successfully use the product or service. Helps build trust and demonstrates value.
Hybrid newsletter: Combines elements of different types of newsletters. Perfect for someone still deciding what kind of newsletter they want.
Expert comment
“Choosing the right newsletter type for your business starts with understanding your audience and your goals. Are you aiming to educate, inspire action, or build trust? Educational guides can position you as an authority, while promotional offers drive quick results. Balancing audience preferences with your objectives is key. By tailoring your approach, you create newsletters that resonate and foster lasting engagement.”
Juste, Product Manager at Omnisend
How to create a newsletter
Follow these 10 steps when building a newsletter for your business:
Prefer a video? Watch this step-by-step tutorial to learn how to craft an email newsletter that captures attention and drives clicks:
Step 1: Choose a newsletter platform
There are quite a few good email marketing software options out there. If you’re designing a newsletter for your small or mid-sized ecommerce business, Omnisend is an excellent choice.
Why? Over 5,400 Shopify store owners rated this email newsletter platform five stars. It also offers hundreds of customizable newsletter templates and is extremely intuitive — you’ll be able to craft a professional newsletter in minutes.
Get started with Omnisend and create newsletters that convert
“I like how easy it is to set up your default emails, and to set up multiples, so you can have a cohesive newsletter every time. For me, the thing that kept me from using a newsletter was the amount of time it would take away from me to do other things but I have found that Omnisend makes it so easy to set up a template so you can speed by your newsletter content every month ! Spend less time writing emails and more time doing what you want to do while keeping your customer informed about what’s going on in your shop/business.”
An email list is vital for newsletters, ensuring you’re targeting engaged subscribers. If you already have one, importing contacts into your newsletter platform is simple.
Don’t have a list yet? No problem. Use email capture tools like popups, spin-to-win games, and embedded forms on your site to encourage visitors to subscribe. These tools can help you build a subscriber base from scratch and grow your audience over time.
What do you hope to accomplish with your newsletter? Do you want to drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness, or strengthen your connection with subscribers? Maybe you aim to generate leads, showcase your expertise, or promote a product or service.
No matter your objective, make sure it’s specific, measurable, and aligned with your overall business strategy. A clear goal helps shape your content and ensures your newsletter achieves its purpose.
“[Email marketing is] “one of our — if not our most — effective marketing efforts… So we needed to be able to work much more efficiently. We needed to build templates easier and create newsletters that look great…”
Learn how Frithjof Solheim, the head of ecommerce at Amundsen Sports, designed a strategy where promotional newsletters drive over 70% of annual email-generated sales.
The subject line is the first thing your recipients see, so make it compelling. When creating an email newsletter, keep it short, clear, and relevant to your newsletter content. You want to spark curiosity without being too vague, encouraging your audience to open the email and engage with what’s inside.
For inspiration, use tools like the Omnisend’s subject line generator to create attention-grabbing lines that resonate with your audience. The preheader text follows the subject line and serves as a sneak peek into the email content. Ensure it complements the subject line and adds more value.
When choosing a template, consider your campaign goal. If you want to promote a product, look for templates with product showcases. If you’re creating educational newsletters, choose one with plenty of space for text and visuals.
Omnisend offers a wide variety of customizable templates to suit any purpose. If you haven’t signed up yet, feel free to explore these templates here.
Once you’ve chosen a template, it’s time to start creating a newsletter. Omnisend’s drag-and-drop email editor makes customization easy, allowing you to add text, images, buttons, and more without coding skills.
You can fully personalize your design with the flexibility of rearranging elements to fit your brand. Plus, Omnisend’s built-in AI writing assistant can help craft compelling copy for your newsletter. Once you’re happy with your design, simply move on to the next step by clicking the green Save & choose recipients button in the top right corner.
Choose the recipients of your newsletter. You can select a pre-made segment from your email list or create a new one based on specific criteria, like location, activity, or engagement. Make sure your audience is relevant to the content you’ve created to ensure higher engagement.
Image via Omnisend
Once you’ve selected your recipients, it’s essential to review your campaign to ensure everything looks perfect before sending it out.
Step 9: Review and schedule the campaign
Before scheduling your newsletter, take a moment to review every detail: the subject line, design, content, recipients, and personalization. Once you’re satisfied, you can set the date and time you want your newsletter to be sent out. Scheduling ensures that your message reaches your audience at the perfect moment.
Image via Omnisend
Tip:
Always send a test email to yourself before scheduling the email. In Omnisend, go to Campaigns > Preview & Test to send a test email and ensure everything looks perfect before sending it to your chosen audience.
Step 10: Monitor the performance
After sending your newsletter, tracking its performance is essential to understanding its success and optimizing future campaigns. In Omnisend, you can easily monitor your campaign’s open rates, click rates, conversions, and more through the Campaigns view.
Check the main Dashboard for an overview of all your marketing activities and insights. For a more in-depth analysis, use Advanced Reporting to explore detailed metrics that help fine-tune your strategy.
Learning how to create a newsletter is easy, and the results are invaluable. You don’t need to be an expert to get started, especially with free templates at your disposal.
Using Omnisend to design and send free and effective email campaigns is simple and intuitive.
Start by choosing a reliable platform such as Omnisend, importing your email list, and setting a clear campaign goal. Then, choose a template, personalize your design, and craft a compelling subject line. After reviewing your content, schedule your campaign and track performance using analytics to refine your approach.
By following these steps, you’ll be on your way to creating newsletters that engage, inform, and convert.
Ready to get started? Sign up for free with Omnisend and create your first newsletter
Milda is a Senior Content Marketing Manager at Omnisend, with extensive experience in communication, helping brands establish a unique and authentic online presence.
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