In my humble opinion, you could make your email newsletter the marketing engine for your coworking space.

The key is to create a high-quality newsletter that people want to read. I’ve talked a bit about the high-level “what” to doing so (and will share more on that in the coming weeks).

But there are also some granular details to be mindful of that aren’t always necessarily intuitive.Here are 16 good tips for email marketing.

1. Have a “thank you” page for subscribers

‍When a new subscriber signs up for your mailing list via a form on your website, make sure they’re redirected to a thank you page. It’s a nice touch that ensures their subscription is obviously acknowledged.

2. Create a dedicated landing page for subscribers

‍In addition to having subscribe forms on your site, it’s also smart to have a dedicated landing page with the sole purpose of getting people to sign up. This way, if you’re promoting your newsletter from an outside source, you can send them directly to the landing page and they won’t get lost looking for your form.

3. Send welcome emails to new subscribers

‍Set up an automation that sends a welcome email to your new subscribers. This is a nice, personal touch and puts you in contact with them right away. It also shows them you’re grateful to have them on your mailing list.

4. Promote your newsletterYou can’t just sit back and hope people subscribe to your newsletter. You need to promote it. You can do this in a bunch of ways, like:

• Promoting it in your email signature
• Taking consolidated articles or highlights from your newsletter and sharing them on social media with a link to your subscribe landing page
• Creating a newsletter so good that people want to share it with others
• Talk about it as much as you can, in conversation or during interviews/podcasts/etc.

5. Create a legit-looking sender nameYou need to look credible if you want people to receive and open your emails, and a big part of that is making sure that:

• Your emails come from your own domain with your name rather than a default (i.e. YourName@YourCompany.com rather than 3hm293nu2b@mailchimp.com”)
• Your emails don’t come from a no-reply email address (i.e. no-reply@yourcompany.com)

For one, it helps your emails feel more personal and can encourage engagement and feedback from subscribers. This can, in turn, positively impact your delivery rates.Remember, this is something you need to manually update.

6. Use custom fields

‍Simple but critical, always use custom fields, such as fields that populate your recipients’ names in the email subject line or in your salutation.

7. Include a signature

‍Even if your email is technically being sent on behalf of your coworking space, it’s nice to have it come from a person rather than just *a company*. It just helps add a personal touch.

So, pick someone to attribute the emails to (even if they’re not the ones writing it!) and include their name as a sign-off at the end of the email.

8. Leverage the power of P.S.

‍If you want people to take action, try including it as a P.S. rather than buried in the body of the email.

Believe it or not, this is an undervalued section of your email and actually attracts attention, making it a powerful place for your CTA.

9. Write clickworthy headlines

‍Your headlines decide whether or not people will read your emails, so they need to be good. Focus on delivering a promise of value or enticing them with the answer to an intriguing question.

For an added level of challenge, the best practice for email headlines is to keep the word count under nine.

10. Have fun with your preview text

‍With your preview text, you can either use the first words of your email (typically 90 - 120 characters) or you can have a bit of fun with them, using them to support or add a to your subject line and give a hint of what your readers can expect in your email.

11. Create a pre-send checklist

‍I love lists, so I always recommend creating a pre-send checklist to make sure you cross your T’s and dot your I’s before irreversibly distributing your message to your subscribers.This can include:

• Writing and copyediting your email in a Word document and then putting it into email
• Check times, dates, and hyperlinks
• Check for subject line or preview text errors
• Make sure the design and functionality work
• Check your segments are right (more to come on that)
• Confirm your scheduled send times are correct (if you’re scheduling in advance)

It’s always smart to send yourself a test email first. You’d be surprised how often I catch errors in my test emails that I can correct before sending out the real deal.

12. Be mindful of timing and toneJust like social media, it’s easy to pre-schedule your emails ahead of time. This is really convenient. But it comes with a caveat.

Always make sure you’re being mindful of dates and tones with your emails—for instance holidays or days when significant news is taking place in the world.It’s important not to seem tone-deaf by sending marketing emails during inappropriate moments.

13. Five-second test it

‍When you read your test email, give it the five-second test.From the second you see it in your inbox, count to five, and see (objectively as possible) if you’re getting enough value to keep reading—from the headline to the preview text to the first few lines of the email.If not, rework it.

14. Segment your emails

‍Email segments allow you to send certain emails to certain recipients but not others. This is important for a number of reasons, like:

• Some emails will be interesting to members but not to non-members and you don’t want to annoy them with irrelevant content
• Some emails will be targeted follow-ups, sometimes even for various services, so you need to ensure they’re only going to relevant people

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So, you could create segments like:

• Members
• Non-members/leads
• Private Office Interest
• Coworking Interest

That way, you can send specific emails to each group without bugging the others.

‍15. Know your metrics

‍There’s no set-it-and-forget-it formula for email marketing. It requires tweaks, experiments, tests, and adaptation in order to really be effective.

And, to track what’s performing best and what people are like versus what they’re not, you need to understand your metrics.The key metrics to understand are:

• Open Rate: This is the percentage of people who opened your emails. The higher, the better. (Industry standard: 18%)
• Click Rate: The percentage of people who click on the links in your email, such as to a blog post you’re promoting or a service you’re pushing. Again, the higher, the better. (Industry standard: 2.6%)
• Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of people who opt out of your mailing list on each email. The lower, the better on this. And, if you see a spike in unsubscribe rates or your rate is higher than the industry standard, it’s probably because your content isn’t resonating. (Industry standard: 0.5%)

16. Do A/B tests

‍A/B tests are a great way to gauge whether one thing works better than another—such as including numbers in your subject line vs. not including numbers or including a bulletpoint list in your email vs. paragraphs.

The key is to use content that’s virtually identical except for one very specific difference that you’re trying to track.

And it’s also important to understand what the results are telling you.

For instance, if you’re testing a subject line difference, you’d want to track which version had higher open rates.

On the other hand, if you’re testing a difference in the body of the email, you’d likely want to track which had had higher click rates.

At the end of the day, email marketing can be an incredibly impactful marketing tool when it’s done correctly. But there are a lot of considerations to keep in mind.

So, make sure you’re following best practices and looking for opportunities to improve your email content to better align with what your readers want.