Ecommerce

How to start a newsletter: Everything ecommerce brands need to know

By Joe Niehaus on Feb 11, 2025

Reviewed by Keisha Singleton on Feb 11, 2025

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For ecommerce brands, a good email marketing campaign is one of the best ways for companies to capture new leads and expand their customer base. But when it comes to engaging this customer base, a well-constructed newsletter is the best way to keep your customers up to date with any information or news about your company.

In this tutorial, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about newsletters: what they are, their benefits for your company, and a step-by-step guide on how to start a newsletter. Sounds good to you? Then keep reading and find out.

A newsletter is a periodic email, made by businesses or individuals with info ranging from updates about the brand to general information and even unique offers.

It‘s an email marketing strategy that’s widely used, especially by ecommerce companies, being very efficient to build engagement rates, customer loyalty, and even helping with conversions.

A newsletter works like a company's newspaper, containing its entire visual identity and strengthening the relationship between the company and its customers. Its main features, and the elements that go into a newsletter, include:

Regularity: Newsletters are typically sent out on a set schedule, such as weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.
Focus on a targeted audience: Newsletters are designed for a specific group of people who share an interest in the topic or organization.
Content centered around your business: Newsletters can include a variety of content, such as: news and updates; articles and blog posts; event announcements; product or service promotions; and calls to action (CTA).
Tool for branding: Newsletters often reflect the overall branding of your business, or an individual who sends them out.

For smaller companies, developing a newsletter can be a lot more work than sending out conventional marketing emails. However, despite this, the strategy offers a number of benefits for your company, including:

Relationship building

When a customer signs up for your newsletter, it is because they have a genuine interest in your products and services. With a newsletter, you can foster this interest and develop a long-term relationship.

With valuable content and information, you can also recapture the interest of those customers who have previously shown interest but have not visited your online store for some time.

Driving traffic

With a newsletter, you can place all kinds of announcements, from the arrival of new products in your inventory to the start of a big sale.

With well-positioned calls to action and hyperlinks, you can direct your customers from the newsletter directly to your sales platforms, increasing traffic and, eventually, conversion rates.

Increasing brand awareness

According to Statista, emails sent and received worldwide reached 347.3 billion in 2023, with expectations of increasing to 392.5 billion by 2026. This shows how emails are tools that only gain more space as the years go by and, through a good newsletter, it’s possible to increase your company's brand awareness to even greater levels than with conventional campaigns.

A good newsletter should represent what your company is all about, but still speak to your customer base. That's why you need to know what your goals are and who the newsletter is intended for, before deciding on more technical aspects like the platform you'll use for the newsletter.

Here's the step-by-step with everything you need to know to start a newsletter:

First things first: what is the purpose of your newsletter? A newsletter can be used to inform, entertain, generate traffic, or help with conversions. Your email can be a mix of all of these elements, or you can focus on one function for your business.

Defining the overall objective, the goal, of your newsletter is essential so that resources aren’t wasted on something that’s not aligned with your overall marketing strategy.

After defining the general objective of your newsletter, it is time to define your operational strategy and how it will work to achieve the stated objective.

Your strategy should cover important points such as:

Target audience: Who will the newsletter be sent to? Define customer profiles that are interested in the different products and services that your business can offer. This is very useful when defining email automation.
Send frequency: Many companies usually send a newsletter every month, but depending on your audience, marketing strategies and the content of your newsletter, it is possible to define fortnightly or even weekly sending frequencies.
Send time: Every marketer who works with email marketing knows that the time you send an email can make the difference between it being read by thousands of people or by none at all. The same goes for newsletters. Knowing your target audience means you need to know the best time to send your newsletter, ensuring that your engagement rate is as high as possible.
Software and tools used: Email automation platforms can help you with several elements of your newsletter sending strategy. You can automate and deliver emails to specific customers. Platforms like Mailchimp and Active are known for managing the newsletter delivery process in a simple and practical way.

Speaking of platforms and tools, the right email newsletter software will help you with all basic processes, from creating a newsletter (its general design) to features like CTA, and customizable aspects..

It’s important to consider that each platform has its own payment and subscription plans, as well as different features you can use. If your business is relatively small, it may be a good idea to opt for more basic and indispensable features for your newsletter, such as email scheduling and personalization.

Some of the best email marketing platforms around include:

Klaviyo
Mailchimp
Mailmodo
ConvertKit
GetResponse
Campaign Monitor
ActiveCampaign
Benchmark Email
Omnisend

A good email marketing platform takes much of the heavy lifting off your hands while allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business. Here are some of the best newsletter platforms to consider.

If you've ever received email marketing from large companies like Uber, you know how most of these emails are stylized, always featuring the company's colors and even beautiful graphics arts.

A good design can draw attention as much as the content of the email itself. Several email marketing platforms offer ready-made templates for your newsletter, but you can also find good designs on sites like Canva and Adobe. Also hiring a graphic designer to create your own template is always a valid option; of course, the important thing is to give your newsletter an attractive look to increase engagement with your material.

You can't simply send newsletters to the emails of customers who haven't requested them (this goes against data protection regulations), so you need to integrate an email sign-up form to capture email of your interested online shoppers

You can integrate a subscription form into your website in the form of pop-ups, for example, offering a gift or discount to each customer who signs up by providing their email. Or during the checkout, informing that, by signing up, customers can be updated on future promotions.

Landing pages and even posts on socials are other great platforms for adding links directing to the email sign-up forms. There are form templates that ask for detailed information, such as name, phone number, and email. But one good tip is to create email subscription forms that only ask for the email. It's less intrusive and practical for the user.

Regardless of the fancy design, automation, and all the work involved in its creation, at the end of the day, a newsletter is still an email. For this reason, make sure your newsletter is well-written and follows basic rules for engagement and optimization. Use copywriting and SEO techniques to produce email texts that grab attention and ensure conversions.

Many newsletters begin with the classic "Hey, [NAME]" to give a personal touch and to create a closer connection with the consumer, who will respond more positively to something that seems customized for them.

According to Mailchimp, the anatomy of a good newsletter has the following content (in order of positioning):

Subject
Preheader
Text
Graphic
CTA
Footer

Your newsletter can be text-only, images-only, or a mix of both. It all depends on the type of business you have, your target audience, and the goal you want to achieve with the newsletter.

7. Track, analyze, and improve

In addition to tracking open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics, you can use your email marketing platform to analyze which specific sections of your newsletter are getting the most attention.

If offers perform better than general information, it may be an indication that your newsletter needs to change its content focus.

It’s also important to ensure that your newsletter has a platform-friendly design. Mobile traffic accounts for 52.2% of all online traffic worldwide (according to Statista), which means that a good portion of your audience receives emails via cell phones and tablets.

Make sure that your newsletter is well optimized and that your CTAs work well regardless of the platform. This way, you can ensure that your newsletter performs at its best, generating traffic and brand awareness for your company.

Now that you know how to create your newsletter, capture emails to send it and what to write in it, here are some good tips to make your newsletter successful:

Write attention-grabbing headlines

The best email marketing are those with attention-grabbing headlines. We’re talking about explosive information, designed to impress the reader in the first few lines.

*STAX grabs our attention by telling us that the famous Zip Jacket is back in stock*

Something like "the biggest promotion of all time" or "the biggest launch we’ve ever done". Something impressive that’s too far from click bait, with the difference that the information is, in fact, true.

Add interactive content

Your newsletter doesn’t have to be just a static image full of links, text, and images. Digital marketing is increasingly incorporating interactive elements into campaigns, whether it’s quizzes, polls, or even pop-ups and interactive stickers.

*Morning Brew encourages readers to share their newsletter for a chance to earn some merch*

This type of element can significantly increase consumer engagement and strengthen the relationship between the company and its customer base.

Diversify your content

We mentioned earlier that you should write content that adds value to your newsletter, but you can go even further.

In this type of email, not everything needs to be an advertisement or have a commercial aspect. A newsletter is an excellent platform for you to share informative and valuable content.

If your company focuses on fitness products, you can dedicate a small section of your newsletter to sharing health tips. Or if you sell clothing, you can create a monthly list of the best looks for each season. Incorporating content marketing into your newsletter is an excellent strategy to further increase engagement with your consumers.

Did you know that you can monetize your newsletter? You can use your newsletter to sell digital products, create memberships, sell ads and sponsorships, and even use affiliate marketing—and Whop can help you do this and much more.

When you create your whop, you can funnel subscribers to your whop where they can access additional content, such as a chat app and forum for communities, giveaways and contests, affiliate content, courses and much more. A whop is a great way to communicate with your customers and fans - and you can even send your newsletter from your whop!

We welp you turn your newsletter into a money-making machine by diversifying your monetization options but keeping all of your revenue streams in one place.

Explore selling on Whop!

The frequently asked questions about how to start newsletters.

A newsletter is a regular email sent to a group of subscribers, providing updates, valuable content, promotions, or insights related to a specific topic, brand, or blog.

A newsletter helps build a loyal audience, drive traffic to your webpage, share exclusive content related to your business, and share promotions and special discounts. You can even use it to monetize your content through affiliate links, or paid subscriptions.

It depends on your audience and content. Weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly schedules work well for most businesses. Just maintain consistency for your dates, so subscribers know what to expect, increasing trust and engagement.

Joe Niehaus

Joe Niehaus is a content writer for Whop. He’s passionate about all things ecommerce and has covered many brands at publishers such as Travel + Leisure, Men's Health, and Business Insider.

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