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Discover the expert tips and tricks for creating a content marketing newsletter that drives results, featuring insights from a freelance content strategy pro.

Publishing a regular newsletter that genuinely resonates with your audience and drives results can be daunting. Especially with everything else on your plate. But with the right planning and production process in place, you can make the process smoother and more effective. In this blog post, I'm sharing my expert tips for setting up a newsletter editorial planning and production process to help you connect with your audience and achieve your marketing goals.

Tip #1: Define your audience

Before you start planning your newsletter, it's essential to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is. Knowing who you're speaking to will help you create content that truly resonates with your readers and drives results. Take the time to research your audience, understand their needs and interests, and tailor your content to meet those needs.

Tip #2: Set clear goals

Once you clearly understand your audience, you can set clear goals for your newsletter. These goals should be specific, measurable, and aligned with your overall marketing strategy. For example, your goal might be increasing website traffic, generating leads, or building brand awareness.

Tip #3: Develop roles and responsibilities

If your team is new to the newsletter game or if you are tweaking your process, it's helpful to be super specific about who is doing what. Having clear roles and responsibilities is essential for ensuring that the content is produced efficiently, effectively, and on schedule. It also helps to eliminate confusion and overlap in tasks, which can lead to delays and errors.

Tip #3: Create a content calendar

A content calendar is a great way to plan and organize your newsletter content—helping you stay on track and ensure that you're publishing consistent, high-quality content. Your calendar doesn't have to be fancy or complicated—I use Google docs.

When creating your content calendar, consider the following:

The business' current initiatives and campaigns
The themes and topics you want to cover
The tone and style of your content
The format of your content (e.g., text, images, videos)
The events happening inside and outside of your organization

Tip #4: Optimize for mobile

With more and more people reading their emails on mobile devices, optimizing your newsletter for mobile is essential. Use a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes and make sure that your content is easily read on a small screen.

Tip #5: Test and analyze

Once your newsletter is published (phew!), it's time to test and analyze the results. Use your email marketing software's analytics to track your newsletter's performance against the goals you set at the beginning. And make adjustments as needed. Analytics will help you fine-tune your process and improve your results over time.

Being intentional to get results

Sometimes teams can get caught up in checking off sending a newsletter off their list. But the point isn't just to send a newsletter every week, month or quarter. The point is to connect with your audience and achieve your marketing goals. An editorial planning and production process can help you and your team streamline the process to gain efficiencies, iterate and test your content, and eventually validate your efforts.