How to start a newsletter (that your audience will actually want to read)
Ok, be honest – how many of the newsletters in your inbox do you actually read?
Yeah. Exactly.
If you’re anything like me, your inbox (or promotions tab, whatever) is probably full of emails from newsletters that sounded cool when you signed up, and now clog up your notifications and annoy you when you remember they exist.
The problem is that most newsletters, I’m so sorry to say, are boring.
In a world already over saturated by online content, it feels like everything has been said, and every format is stale.
And like – we know everything. We know the marketing gimmicks. There’s like, a zillion reels about the same topics.
Which means the newsletters that stand out (and not just with click-baity subject lines, lol) and do something refreshing, are ones people actually look forward to.
Newsletters that are not-boring and that say something new (and that, you know, sell your products or services!)
Which is exactly the kind of newsletter we’re talking about today.
Newsletters people actually want to read.
Hi, I’m Elle…
Website Copywriter, Unapologetic Girls’ Girl, And (According To Clients) An “Absolute Dream.”
What Makes a Newsletter Worth Reading?
That’s a great question, and it’s not just one thing.
But to put it simply – a newsletter worth reading is one that gives something to your audience, whether that’s educating them, inspiring them, or even entertaining them.
A ‘worthy’ newsletter should:
Have A Clear Purpose
So, not just updates or random stories – there’s a clear and obvious reason WHY someone should subscribe and keep reading. And, yes, we’ll get into this in more detail later in this post
Deliver consistent value
So people should get something every time they read your newsletter, not just one freebie when they sign up.
Feel Personal
Your newsletter subscribers should be one step up from your social media followers or podcast listeners. These are your VIP’s – they’ve given you their email address and invested their time into your brand – they should feel special, because they are.
Be Different
Which is probably the hardest part of starting a newsletter in 2026.
Every single business owner had a newsletter, and most of them, honestly, are saying the same thing. If yours doesn’t have personality, or something unique, or an interesting format – your emails are probably gonna end up in the ‘unread’ folder.
So – now we’ve touched a little on what makes a good newsletter – let’s talk about what you actually came here for – How to start a newsletter, and make it one that people can’t wait to open.
I’m also an ambassador for romanticizing business and making it fun, an expert in non-toxic conversion copy, a Miranda Priestley apologist, and my actual job description should really be ‘matchmaker for you and your dream clients“
If you liked reading this blog post – I would love to hang out more with you 🙂
And these, IMO, are the best ways for us to that:
Step 1: Define the Purpose of Your Newsletter (For Your Business)
The first thing you need to decide is why this newsletter will exist, in terms of your business, and your goals.
Are you trying to get more traffic to your website?
Are you trying to get more readers for your blog?
Are you trying to sell your services or products?
Are you trying to grow your YouTube channel?
(You can 100% do more than one of these things in your newsletter, btw, but having a main goal will help you plan your newsletter and make sure that the time you put into writing it actually comes back to you in revenue or growth)
Your newsletter, at the end of the day, is there to help you grow your business.
It’s a great tool to help you connect with your audience, but if it’s not converting to more sales or followers or readers or whatever, then it’s going to quickly become draining to write.
So – step 1: you need to figure out what you want to achieve from starting your newsletter, and if you have more than one goal you want to achieve – choose 3, and number them based on highest priority to lowest.
Step 2: Define the Purpose of Your Newsletter (For Your Audience)
The next step is figuring out what your audience will get from your newsletter (a.k.a. why would they subscribe, and then stick around)
And then, trying to figure out how you phrase that as a promise, or a tagline, to get people excited to subscribe to your newsletter. (Remember, no one is going to subscribe to something that doesn’t sound good!)
I’m a huge fan of productized newsletters (which mean that instead of relying on free resources as incentives for growing your list – you give your email a specific selling point that makes people want to sign up)
This can be anything that is highly valuable to your audience – free tips or advice, case studies, insider industry knowledge, or exclusive behind-the-scenes info about your work or process.
So as an example – on my newsletter, every single week, I do a mini-lesson that breaks down a copywriting technique, using my last email as the example.
This gives my subscribers a clear, obvious reason to subscribe, and it gives my newsletter and easy selling point:
“Learn how to write better emails every week by reading them”
My friend Sara from BTL copy shares a marketing story every week – her easy newsletter tagline is ‘One marketing tip, once a week”
Easy, obvious, and makes you wanna sign up.
But.
You don’t have to do a productized email to get people to want to read it.
You can have a different incentive, or selling point.
Instead, you could have a theme, or share content that you know is especially relevant to your target audience.
One of my favorite newsletters is the Girlboss one – and in their newsletters, they share lots of different things – sometimes interviews with women in business, sometimes industry news, sometimes product recommendations.
Here’s the tagline on their site:
“Career inspiration and intel—with a welcome dose of pop-culture. We’ll perk up your work week, Monday to Friday.”
The benefit or ‘purpose’ for me, as the audience, to sign up, is that I’ll stay up to date with my industry (being a business owner) and also, get pop-culture info, which you know I’m obviously obsessed with.
And another method you could try for your emails is having the entertainment, or the promise of something crazy – be the selling point.
Take Tonic Site Shop:
“Join 40k+ Subscribers Who Apparently Love Our Weird Marketing Newsletter”
The ‘promise’ of the newsletter is that you’re going to get to read something really weird or unusual in their newsletters – the tagline makes you so curious that you have to subscribe just to figure out what they’re talking about.
So – homework for step 2: start thinking about what you could write about in your newsletter that is unique, exciting, or valuable, and what kind of tagline or promise you can create for that.
Step 3: Define Your Audience (Properly)
The next thing you need to do is figure out who your target audience for your newsletters are.
Notice I said target audience. Not just your current audience.
Your target audience is the idea people you would want to read your newsletter – dream clients, idea customers, the exact people you want to read your blog – whatever.
You’re going to write your newsletter for the people who you hope will read it, not just peop;e who are currently subscribers.
Because, just lie with website copy, your newsletter is not going to be for everyone. It’s going to be specific to that target audience, you’re only going to write for them, and if some people don’t like the way you write, they can unsubscribe, because you’re not for everyone.
So – before you start writing or even planning content for your newsletter – ask yourself these questions:
- Who is the person that I am hoping will read this newsletter?
- What do they care about, and what do they value?
- What would they be interested in reading about weekly or monthly?
- What can I offer them that no one else can?
Step 4: Create a Simple, Repeatable Format
So the next thing you want to do is figure out how often you can post.
Depending on your capacity with business and how long you think you can spend writing a newsletter, choose whether you want to do it monthly, bi-weekly, or even weekly.
Then you want to figure out a simple, repeatable format for your newsletter.
The reason I recommend doing this is because writing a newsletter, especially if you’re doing it weekly, can get really overwhelming if you have to try and think of a new idea every single week.
If you have a repeatable format or a structure, it builds consistency for your audience and it also makes it easier for you to want to write them every single week.
An example that you could use for this is having one main idea, one story, and then one takeaway.
You could also have a case study where every week you share something you did that week with a client – what was wrong, what you needed to fix, how you fixed it, and the result.
Or, you could have a format where you share something that happened to you, a marketing lesson that you learned from it, how it ties back to your industry, and then a CTA at the end.
The other thing that you can do is have a newsletter that is built into sections, like I have with my newsletter right now, where you split your newsletter into different sections and every single week you fill in those sections.
So for example, in my newsletter right now, I have The Hot Gossip, which is something that’s happened in my life, a story, or an industry trend. Hot Copy, where I take one piece of copy I’ve seen that week and give my review on it. Girl Crush, which is where I share one female business owner that I think is really cool. And then I share my email newsletter tip at the end.
I also sometimes share behind the scenes if I think that’s relevant or a testimonial, but that changes every single week. By doing this, it gets rid of the what do I write problem, it helps you feel a lot less overwhelmed, and it also builds consistency for your audience, which makes it easier for them to want to read your newsletter.
Step 5: Write Like a Human (Not a Brand)
Okay, so now you have the basics of your newsletter. You know why it exists and what business goals you’re trying to achieve. You know what your selling point for your newsletter is and what your audience is gonna get from it. And you know how often you’re gonna post, and you have a structure for what you’ll talk about every single week.
The next thing we need to focus on when starting a newsletter that people will want to read is figuring out how to write in a way that people will enjoy reading. So the biggest thing I can say is: write like a human, not like a business.
A really good piece of advice for writing copy that feels normal and sounds human is to read it aloud to yourself once you write it. Does it sound like something you would say? Does it sound like something a human would say? If that’s the case, then you’ve done a great job and it’s fine. If it sounds robotic, if it sounds like ChatGPT, if it sounds unnatural, you want to rewrite it.
A lot of people feel like with business stuff or anything to do with their brand, they need to write in a way that sounds professional. I guess that idea is left over from school, but when you’re writing for humans, especially in email, it’s a pretty informal, very casual experience. So you definitely want to write in your brand voice, and you want to write your newsletters as if you’re talking to a friend.
Remember that your newsletter subscribers are VIPs. They’re special, and you want to treat them like they are your insiders and your friends. So make sure that you write in a conversational tone, that it feels like a human has written it. It should feel personal. Depending on your brand, it doesn’t have to feel unserious, but it should feel like you’re talking to a friend, and you want to avoid anything that sounds overly polished or corporate.
You also want to avoid writing in language that your audience will not understand. So for example, if your business is very technical, try to use really simple terms that anyone can understand. Don’t use overly technical terms for your industry if that’s not something the average person will understand.
Step 6: Make Every Email Worth Opening
The next part of writing an email that people are gonna want to open is making them worth opening. So you have your selling point, you have a reason that you’re writing them, however, once somebody is subscribed to your list, you still need to make sure that every email is going to catch their attention when they see it in the inbox and make them want to click, which means that you need to have really great subject lines.
So how do you write a great subject line?
- Curiosity
- Value
- Clarity
What do I mean by that?
Curiosity is an email subject line where it makes you so curious you can’t help but open it. So for example, you might have an email that says something like “the worst mistake I ever made”, or “I can’t believe this happened”, or “that time when I got robbed”, or something crazy that people see and they’re like, oh my God, I have to open that because what is this email even about?
We actually call these open loops in copywriting, and it basically means that they open a curiosity loop in someone’s mind. They have to open your email to close it.
Then when it comes to value and clarity, it could be something where you’re just very obviously stating what’s in the email. This works really great if you have a newsletter or an email where you are giving them something super valuable and you just want them to know exactly what’s inside.
So it could be something like “you have a discount in this email”, or “exclusive early access to my next sale”, or “early access to my YouTube video”. Something where the benefit of opening the email is so obvious that you just say it.
Don’t overthink this because it might seem really hard, but essentially you just need to think: is this interesting? Would I open an email if it had this subject line? Would this stand out to me in an inbox?
You can send yourself test emails to see how it looks in your inbox and whether it would stand out.
The one thing I’m 100% gonna say here is: do not do clickbait. Nothing will make your subscribers hate you faster or unsubscribe faster than doing clickbait. So if you are using a curiosity subject line or a really crazy subject line or promising them some sort of value in the email and you don’t deliver it in the body copy, you will lose subscribers so fast, so don’t do that.
Try to think of something that is 100% linked to whatever’s in your newsletter or your email and make sure that that is what is in the subject line.
Step 7: Be Consistent
Okay, so one of the biggest places where people fail with writing newsletters is not staying consistent. This is why it’s really important to make sure you choose a posting cadence that feels manageable to you.
If you don’t think you can do a weekly newsletter or think of something to say every single week, you do not have to send a newsletter once a week. You can send it twice a month or once a month. And especially if you’re sending something really high value, like a case study or something with data or sharing your process, you do not need to be posting every single week.
If you are posting every single week, you need to make sure that you can stay consistent with that. And that’s why when you pick your structure or design it, you need to choose a structure that is easy for you to follow, that isn’t too long, and where you will, even on bad weeks, be able to have something to say.
So for example, I post a blog post once a week, so I know that even if I’m low on ideas for a newsletter, I can always share my blog post and that is valuable for me because I’m still getting something from it and giving something to my audience.
Or you can make sure that you are planning your newsletters in advance. So it could be that if you wanted to post weekly, you might want to sit down one day at the start of each month and write down four ideas of stories that you’re going to talk about in your newsletter.
Staying consistent means that you stay top of mind for your audience. They know when to expect content from you and they learn to look forward to it. It also means that it builds trust with them, it builds a habit, and it gives them a specific day to look forward to. It also builds trust with the ESPs, which are the email service providers, which we’ll talk a little bit about later.
It’s also helpful to be consistent because it really is valuable when you are selling your newsletter or promoting it on your website or in a form to tell people what to expect, as in you will get an email from me on this day about this thing. That helps people trust your email more, look forward to it, remember to open it, and makes it easier for you to sell your newsletter.
Step 8: Grow TF Out Of Your Newsletter
OK, so now that you’ve got a plan for your newsletter, you know what you’re going to write about, you have a structure, you have a plan for your voice, you know who you’re writing for, the next thing you actually need to do is grow your newsletter.
There are a lot of different ways to grow your newsletter. Like I said, having a productized email really helps with this. So a productized email is something that has a promise or a tagline, the value is obvious, and the actual newsletter is the selling point. You’re telling people, if you sign up for this, you will get that.
The other way that you could do it is freebies. So if you don’t know what a freebie is, it is a free resource that you are sharing with somebody in exchange for their email address. So if they subscribe, they will get access to the free resource. I’m not going to go into detail on those right now because I am writing another blog post about this, but this is a good way to get people on your newsletter fast.
However, if you want people to stay interested and keep reading the newsletter, I would still recommend having an incentive or a productized newsletter that keeps their interest past the freebie. A big mistake that a lot of people make is they create really great freebies, people download them, get subscribed to the newsletter, and then immediately unsubscribe because all they wanted was the freebie. They don’t care about the newsletter and you haven’t given them enough of a selling point.
So if you do use a freebie, make sure in the welcome sequence or the welcome email that they get, you tell them about your newsletter. You tell them what the benefit of the newsletter is, the incentive they’re going to get for signing up, and you share the tagline or the promise so that once they’ve got the freebie, they stick around to keep reading your newsletters.
You also need to promote your newsletter all the time. Talk about it everywhere – on your blog, on your social media, in your content. Post about it regularly. Put it on your website. Put it in the footer of your website. Have a subscribe page on your website. If you do not talk about your email all the time, people are not going to know that it exists, and they’re not going to join your newsletter.
You can also do collaborations and cross-promotions with people. So that’s where you would feature in somebody else’s newsletter, write a guest post for someone and include the fact that you have a newsletter, or do an Instagram story in collaboration with somebody else or a social post that links back to your newsletter.
Step 9: Balance Value and Selling
The next tip that I would give for writing a newsletter your audience is actually going to want to read is balancing value and selling.
So I started this by saying that you shouldn’t have a newsletter unless it has a business goal for you. You should be selling through your newsletter, you should be growing your business, growing your blog, growing your YouTube, whatever it is that you want to do. However, it also needs to provide value to your audience and they should never feel like they are being sold to.
A common rule that people have within the email world is that for every salesy email that you send, you should have two emails that just provide value.
So what is the difference between those two? A sales email is something that is obviously selling something, so it could be like “hey, I’ve just launched this new offer, you can sign up here”. I recently launched a new blogging offer. I promoted that quite heavily in one email, talked about it a bit in the next email, and then went back to providing value.
A valuable email is something that just gives something to your audience. That could be a blog post, a tip, a case study, or an insight into your process, something that helps them make their life better.
So if you put together a structure for your newsletter, you can blend these two things together and make it not super obvious, and you can provide both value and sell subtly in each thing.
But I want to hammer home this idea that it’s okay for you to sell sometimes in your email. It’s totally fine for you to just sometimes say “hey, I’m doing this offer, you should buy it”. I have this service, I have some spaces left, and just outright sell in your newsletter. But make sure that you are always balancing your newsletters with value or entertainment and either very subtly selling or giving people a CTA to something else in your funnel, whether that’s a video on YouTube or a podcast episode or a blog post, so that the selling comes from the rest of your funnel instead of aggressively selling in your newsletter.
There is nothing wrong with selling, people know you’re a business, just don’t do it so obviously that your audience feels like you don’t care about them and all you want to do is sell. They should feel like you care about giving them value, and that’s why your newsletter exists.
Step 10: Choose an ESP
Okay, so the next thing you’re going to want to do is choose your email service provider. I’ve left this until later in the process specifically because each email service provider does different things, and whether or not you choose one or the other is going to depend on what you want to do with your newsletter. So you already know the purpose of it, the target audience, and the structure.
There are a lot of different ESPs to choose from. My recommendation is to choose one that is free or cost effective to start if you’re new to growing it, or choose one that has the most features that you need at the lowest cost. Most email service providers do have a free plan. I would recommend going to research all of them. I’m not going to go through all of them here, but I have a post comparing Flowdesk and ConvertKit, which are two that I have used and are very commonly used.
Flowdesk has a free plan, which is pretty limited. It has forms and landing pages, templates, and audience segmentation. It’s great for growing your list, but you can’t actually send emails on it, so it is kind of pointless to have, in my opinion. The next plans are quite expensive compared to others. But if you want to have an email that is really pretty and design is a really important part of your email and structure, which a lot of people, especially service providers who work with other service providers, really care about, you can look at Flowdesk.
ConvertKit has a free plan. It’s great for just sending basic emails and it’s good for archiving your emails. However, if you wanted to have lots of workflows, like different welcome sequences for different freebies, ConvertKit is really limited for that.
Then you have MailerLite, which I think is another good option. The emails are pretty plain, but they do have a good free plan that includes quite a lot of different workflows that you can set up. So if cost is the biggest thing you’re worried about, then MailerLite’s free plan might be the best option for you.
If you’re more interested in design and having really branded emails, Flowdesk might be the right option for you. And if you just want to start really simple and all you want to do is send out a newsletter, then ConvertKit could be a good option.
But go compare each of the different ones yourself.(You can read my blog post to see how I felt about ConvertKit and Flodesk and choose one that will work best for your needs.)
The other thing I would say is if you’re not planning on sending lots of emails and you just want to send one once a month, I would recommend just using a free plan if you don’t have any other workflows that you want to set up, or using MailerLite. If you’re paying a lot for a subscription to an email platform, you should be using it regularly. If you’re only going to use it once or twice a month, I don’t think you should pay for it.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
We’ve already talked about inconsistent sending, but trying to stay consistent is a little bit like posting on socials. It’s helpful, it’s good for your email service provider to trust you, and it’s less likely for you to end up in promotions or spam. If you send very inconsistently, it can signal to email service providers that you’re not as trustworthy. Also, people will forget about you if it doesn’t come out regularly and they’re not looking forward to it.
However, I will preface this with saying do not burn yourself out, and it’s totally fine to take a break from sending emails. If you have to miss a week, your subscribers are not going to hate you forever. It won’t destroy your email list. If you need to take a break, you can just start sending again. If you set up your email correctly and give them a really good incentive and a reason to keep reading, it won’t matter if you miss a few because they’ll still be excited to read them. The main thing is to make sure that you have created an email that people actually want to read.
The next big mistake is writing for yourself instead of writing for your readers. Like I said, you want to pick one target person, one target audience, one dream reader, and you’re going to write every newsletter to them. Don’t write the newsletter for you, write it for your audience. You want to write in your voice about things that are interesting to you, but you always want to make sure that your newsletters are valuable to your audience and that they’re going to be interested in what you’re writing.
Make sure that you are writing for your ideal client, not just anyone, not everyone, and not for you, but for the person who you want to read the newsletter. Make sure that you keep your voice conversational.
Another issue is either using ChatGPT to write it and not editing it so it sounds unnatural, or writing it too professionally. Make sure that you’re writing in a consistent voice.
Don’t overload your emails with too much content. I have made this mistake and it’s something that I’ve had to refine a lot as I’ve grown my business – trying to do too much in each email. Not only did that make it hard for my audience to read the whole email because it was too much, but it also led to me getting burnt out because I was writing really long emails every single week.
You can switch up your format. You don’t have to stick to the same thing every week. You can rotate through different sections, or just make it shorter and focus on something that is short, impactful, and valuable instead of writing a huge essay.
Another common mistake is using too many images. This is something to be super aware of, especially if you’re using Flowdesk. Flowdesk will encourage you to use a lot of their design blocks or images, and a lot of people do. However, email platforms will read those blocks as images. If your email has too many images, it is more likely to trigger a spam filter because it can look promotional, so it might end up in promotions or spam and be less likely for your audience to read it.
So make sure that you’re always balancing your images and your text. I recommend having at least 50% text and 50% images, and if possible, having more text than images.
In Conclusion: Write Something People Would Miss
The test that you want to ask yourself is: would someone notice if you stopped sending?
Would someone care if you stopped sending?
Would somebody email you to say, hey, I miss your emails?
Are you writing something that is so entertaining that it brightens people’s week and they get excited to read it? Are you writing something so valuable that you’re helping people grow their businesses or make their lives better? Are you writing something that is so interesting that people can’t wait to open your emails?
I know it’s easier said than done, but realistically, the difference between a newsletter that people ignore and one that people want to read is something that is actually interesting and that makes their lives better, whether that is entertaining them, helping them grow something, or making them feel better about themselves.
You need to write something that people are going to miss, and that really comes from following those first few steps and making sure that you are planning something that is for your dream audience and that is going to give them value in their life.
And then secondary to that, staying consistent, focusing on building connection, and remembering that that is more important than perfection.
The last thing that I will leave you with is, as always with everything in business, don’t overthink it.
I have redesigned my newsletter and added multiple sections loads of different times.
You are not stuck on one thing.
The best thing you can do is just, once you have a plan and you’ve finished planning from this blog post, just start. You can tweak your newsletter as you go. The best thing about email and newsletters as a medium is you can measure statistics from your sending, you can test different things, you can see what’s working, and you can change it every single week.
Once you have enough subscribers, you can even ask them what they like to see. Don’t overthink it. Just start writing your newsletter, and you can always change it.
The Hot Gossip, The 411
More from The Blog
If you loved this post, and you want to get the 411 on more things copy and marketing – here’s your next read, all lined up.
Hi, I’m Elle
Website Copywriter, Unapologetic Girls’ Girl, And (According To Clients) An “Absolute Dream.”
I’m also an ambassador for romanticizing business and making it fun, an expert in non-toxic conversion copy, a Miranda Priestley apologist, and voted most likely to over-deliver and overshare.
But — you know what else I am?
A girl who’s tired of seeing talented, creative women settling for mediocre copy and generic branding because they think they have to do it all themselves, or they’re waiting for permission to step into their It Girl era and become the hot brand they’re supposed to be.
Which is why I’d love for you to finally get copy that reflects your full potential — even if you can’t quite yet put that into words.
