- beehiiv Blog
- Posts
- How To Build a Branded Newsletter
How To Build a Branded Newsletter
The Elusive Secret to Engaged and Loyal Readers
Jacob Bear
September 9th, 2024
If you want to make money, build a business. But if you want to get wealthy, build a brand.
Sit down for coffee in any city, state, or country in the world, and you’ll immediately know if you’re in a Starbucks.
People flock to Starbucks, even if there’s better coffee nearby, because they feel comfortable when they recognize the company’s specific colors, sites, and sounds.
These elements and more fall under the label of “branding.”
Branding makes a product easy to recognize, and this familiarity is key to the success of many businesses.
We’re going to show you how to harness the power of branding in your newsletter. Let’s start with why you need it.
Understanding the Importance of Newsletter Branding
Your readers have busy lives. They’re likely to receive more than 200 emails per day.
If you write about news or a specific niche (or both), there’s a good chance that your competitors are covering similar topics.
Branding your newsletter makes it stand out. Readers will recognize your newsletter and eventually think of you as a reliable friend.
Better still, Forbes reported that brand recognition increases conversions and sales.
Brand Recognition Through Newsletter Design
Out of all the channels where you interact with your audience, your email newsletter is the one where you have the most control. That’s why it makes sense to dial in your branding in your newsletter.
The Impact of Branding on Reader Loyalty
In 2020, the Journal of Consumer Research curated years of research on brand loyalty. They weren’t looking specifically at newsletters; but if you think of your newsletter as a “product,” two results of the research are important:
A stronger brand leads to more loyalty to the brand’s products.
People are more loyal to a branded product than they are to a generic version of the same product, even when the generic version is identical.
The research suggests that a strong newsletter brand will inspire more loyalty in your readers.
How do you achieve this result? It starts with a choice.
One of the first steps in branding is to make a clear choice about the feelings you want readers to associate with your newsletter. This is the essence of your brand.
All of your decisions around design, copy, images, fonts, and even timing of delivery should be geared towards invoking these feelings. Let’s see how this works.
Visual Branding Elements
Here’s an example of how images and other visual elements can impact your readers’ feelings as they browse your content.
Incorporating Brand Imagery: The Story of Calm
Calm is currently the #1 most-used meditation app.
Jeffrey Perlman, the brand architect for Zumba, talks about Calm’s branding strategy in his online course, Building an Unstoppable Brand.
Early in the company’s history, Calm relied heavily on images of people meditating, sitting in gardens and natural settings, and looking serene.
The company eventually replaced most of these images with quiet scenes in nature, fluffy clouds, and gentle ripples on a smooth surface of water. Rather than showing pictures of other people who were calm, they showed pictures that made their users feel calm.
What types of images invoke the feelings you want to associate with your brand? These are the images that you should use in your newsletter branding.
Selecting Typography That Speaks to Your Audience
Typography is simply the appearance of text in your newsletter. Fonts, size, and text color are all a part of typography.
While text is more subtle than images, you should still be thinking about the feelings you want to invoke. Each font has its own style and mood, and your choices can make a difference.
Here are some guidelines for typography:
Keep your typography consistent across your newsletter, website, social media, ads, and other channels.
Use enough contrast between your text color and background color to make your text easy to read.
As a rule of thumb, using 22 pixels for your H2 headings and 14 pixels provides a good ratio for readability.
Make sure that your text is readable and looks correct on different devices by using web-safe fonts.
Don’t use more than 3 different fonts or text colors in a single piece of content.
Choosing the Right Color Palette
Your choice of brand colors is important. Colors imply different moods, feelings, and ideas.
For example, Salary Transparent Street talks almost exclusively about money. The newsletter emphasizes its money orientation by using the same shade of green in its links, transitions, section headers, and even the borders around images.
While factors such as culture and personal preference will temper the effects of color, it’s still critical that you think about color psychology as you design your newsletter.
The use of contrast is a big factor in your color choices. For example, you can employ different background colors to emphasize the transition from one section to another.
Note how Vincent Spotlight shifts from a white background to a blue one for their news section.
Clarifying Your Brand's Core Values
When your reader feels like your newsletter was written just for them, it’s a sign of a strong brand.
Naturally, you can enhance this effect with segmentation and personalization, but a branded newsletter goes deeper than that.
Think about why you’re in business, what you ultimately want to achieve, and who you want to help. This will clarify the core values of your brand.
Your core values may be obvious, and you might make them explicitly front-and-center, as Brooke LeBlanc does with her newsletter on sober living.
Often the way your newsletter expresses your core values will be more subtle, but clarifying your values will always help your brand stand out to readers who share the same values.
The best thing about a newsletter template is that you only have to create it once.
Each time you drop a new issue of your newsletter, all you have to do is copy and paste the new content into your template.
However, it’s important to build the right template as early as possible. You’ll probably end up testing and tweaking certain components, but you don’t want to spend a ton of time overhauling your entire layout.
Customization of Templates for Uniqueness
Most email platforms provide templates for you. This is a huge time saver.
Unfortunately, it can also make it hard for readers to discern your newsletter from others that are using the same template.
Crafting a Unique Template Design
There are three ways to ensure that your template design is unique.
The first and hardest way is to create a unique template from scratch. If you’re good with design and coding, you may consider going this route. If you have the budget to hire people with these skills, then building from scratch might be a viable option.
However, most newsletter publishers will probably take the second choice. The second option is to use a third-party template and make it your own. You can start with any template provided by your email service. Then, simply adjust the colors, fonts, and images to fit your brand.
The third choice is a hybrid of the first two. Using a platform such as beehiiv, you can create a template from scratch without needing to know how to code.
This is a rare feature. But if you have access to it, you can easily create a unique template design that incorporates all of your brand elements.
Matching Templates to Brand Personality
Your brand has its own personality, whether it’s playful, authoritative, friendly, or irreverent.
As we’ve shown you already, elements such as images, colors, and fonts also have a personality.
Let’s look at how to put all of these elements together to create a branded newsletter.
Aligning Layout With Brand Strategy
Once you’ve made deliberate choices about the look and feel of your newsletter brand, aligning your layout with your brand strategy should be straightforward.
The most important rule in layout is consistency. Every issue of your newsletter should have the same look and feel.
Here’s a quick checklist to help you align your layout with your brand strategy:
Use images that evoke emotion(s) that you want readers to associate with your brand.
Keep the placement and size of these images consistent in every issue of your newsletter.
Develop a header and footer that will be the same in every issue.
Assign a font, text size, and text color to each type of heading (i.e., H2, H3, etc.) and for your body copy.
Choose a permanent background color for your newsletter or one for each section if you wish to create more contrast.
Take advantage of underlooked components. For example, create dividers between sections that are unique to your brand by experimenting with size and color or by using customized graphics as Milk Road has done.
Brand consistency is only one part of a good newsletter layout. Your design should also make your newsletter both readable and visually interesting.
Ensuring Readability in Your Newsletter Design
When a reader opens your email, they may be juggling other tasks. They could be tired or distracted, or both.
For this reason, design your newsletter with the assumption that half of your readers are only going to scan it. If they see a lot of headings breaking up the content, your newsletter is going to appear more readable.
If these headings are interesting as well, your readers will take a closer look.
The Role of White Space in Design
You can also make your newsletter appear more readable by including lots of white space. This will make your content appear less dense.
In addition, more white space around an item--whether it’s an image or a block of text--will draw attention to it.
Here are a few ways to increase white space:
Aim for a maximum of 5 lines per paragraph on a mobile device or 3 lines on a desktop.
Use bulleted lists for 3-7 items; use numbers for longer lists.
Break up the text with a lot of headings and subheadings.
Use wide margins.
Use generous padding around the borders of your images
Balancing Aesthetics With Functionality
Your newsletter should be consistent with your brand. It has to look good, and, of course, it needs to be readable.
On top of all that, there’s still one more requirement. Your newsletter has to get readers to follow your Call to Action (CTA) and other desired actions such as sharing, clicking, and subscribing. It has to function.
This is where you need to bring out your magic wand and summon the power of visual hierarchy.
Utilizing Visual Hierarchy in Layouts
Visual hierarchy is the art and science of controlling your readers’ experience. You achieve this control by drawing attention to specific components in your newsletter.
For example, the size and color of each element of your newsletter will determine how much it stands out. White space can draw attention to a component of your newsletter.
Become a student of reader engagement and the ways your design choices influence that engagement.
Incorporating Your Brand Elements Into Email Newsletters
We’ve already given you a lot to think about. The good news is that you only have to make your branding choices once. When all is said and done, your choices come down to a few repeatable elements:
Images
Colors
Fonts
Sections
Layout
Once you’re clear on the basics, you can take a 30,000 foot look at how you want to incorporate these elements into your message.
Emphasizing Key Messages With Design
The secret to getting your message across is through repetition.
Your header and footer are key areas where you can repeat the same message and incorporate many brand elements.
Your header, in particular, has the power to engage your readers because it’s the first thing they see when they open your newsletter.
However, your footer is also valuable real estate. Make it work for you.
Leveraging Logos and Taglines Effectively
Your tagline and logo should convey the same ideas and feelings as your brand colors.
You want these two brand elements to become as familiar as Nike’s “swoosh” logo and their tagline, “Just Do It.”
Adding your tagline and logo to every issue of your newsletter should be a no-brainer, but it’s just as important to make these elements visible and to put them in the same place every time.
Maintaining Brand Elements in Headers and Footers
Your header is a good spot to place your logo, as The Rundown AI does.
If you don’t have a logo or tagline in your header, here are a few other locations to consider:
Your signature
Your footer
At the beginning or end of a section
Why Trust Us? All beehiiv writers are carefully vetted for their knowledge and experience. Jacob Bear has been writing email newsletters for his clients for nearly a decade. This year he launched his first beehiiv newsletter and is gleefully playing with new branding ideas. |
Writing Engaging Content for Your Newsletter
Creating Content That Resonates
In addition to everything we’ve discussed so far, you need your readers to read your content, and they need to like it.
We’re going to show you how to make it easier.
Developing a Content Calendar
Batching your content creation is one of the best time-saving strategies you’ll ever find.
Batching means writing several posts, articles, or newsletter issues at once and releasing them according to a schedule.
Developing a content calendar makes batching easier and more intuitive.
We’ve written a detailed guide on using a content calendar, but here’s the quick “how-to”:
Review any news, trends, books, or other resources that you turn to for ideas.
Brainstorm ideas for your content.
If any of these ideas are tied to a specific date or event, schedule them first.
Set a deadline for all of the remaining content ideas.
Assign the writing, design, and posting for each idea to team members.
Track the progress for each content piece in a spreadsheet or project management software.
Crafting a Consistent Brand Voice
Is your writing style minimalist or chatty? Casual or formal?
Do you sound like an attorney, or do you drop f-bombs in every sentence?
Your brand voice is another critical element of your newsletter brand. What do you write about and how do you write about it?
The Importance of Content Variety
You’ll have to make your own choices about what to publish, but here are a few content suggestions that are universal:
Open your newsletter and share important information with a story. Stories are 22x more engaging than facts by themselves.
Provide actionable advice. When your reader finishes your newsletter, what will they know how to do that they couldn’t do before?
Share behind-the-scenes glimpses of your team, your work, and the effort it takes to deliver each issue to your clients’ inbox.
Celebrate your readers’ successes and acknowledge their efforts. Share their stories and their content (with permission, of course).
Talk about your values and what you and your team are doing to make the world better.
Using Images and Graphics To Enhance Newsletter Branding
Optimizing Graphics for Email Delivery
Looks aren’t everything.
You can have a beautifully designed newsletter, but the size and placement of your graphics might affect the delivery of your newsletter.
For example, there are different ways to embed photos in your newsletter. Some of these techniques involve various file types and sizes. An email file larger than 100KB can lead to deliverability issues.
Fortunately, it’s easy to avoid this problem with the right email platform. If you use beehiiv, you can embed gifs and images from an extensive library or add your own with a few clicks. The platform sizes them for you.
Legal Considerations for Graphics
If you create a logo from stock images and templates, such as those provided by Canva, you don’t have exclusive rights. You can use the image, but you can’t trademark it.
This means that other people may be able to use your logo without serious legal consequences.
Using a logo designed with AI is a more complex issue, but the rights you have depend on the platform you use.
Aside from logos, there are legal considerations for the rest of the graphics in your newsletter.
The most common issue is that you don’t have exclusive rights to an image. If you use stock photos, for example, you have permission to use them but so do other people.
In some cases, you may need to include a caption giving credit to the artist or photographer.
When you’re using images that you made yourself without drawing upon other sources, you own the copyright. You may be able to trademark your original image for further protection.
However, if even part of your image came from another source, other people may have the right to use your image under certain circumstances.
Even if you clearly own the rights to an image, someone else might be able to use it in certain situations under the Fair Use Doctrine.
We recommend that you consult with a legal expert if you’re concerned about any of these efforts.
Choosing Images That Reflect Your Brand
The strongest brands inspire strong emotions. In choosing images that reflect your brand, be aware of how the images make you feel.
Sourcing High-Quality Images
Today, many email platforms offer the free use of stock photos, which the beehiiv editor will embed seamlessly into your newsletter. There’s also an AI image tool that will create images based on the description you provide.
Of course, there are a broad range of sources for images, ranging from AI-generated pictures to stock photos to graphics created by professionals.
Please familiarize yourself with the legal ramifications of using these images.
In addition to the examples we’ve already shown, we recommend visiting the Creator Spotlight website If you’re looking for newsletter examples for inspiration.
Avoiding Common Branding Mistakes
Most branding mistakes come from two things.
Either a business owner misunderstands what branding means, or they’re not clear about their values.
These two shortcomings lead to branding problems such as inconsistency, chasing trends that don’t last, and copying other brands.
While you don’t want to become a copycat, it’s worth analyzing your competitors’ newsletter strategies.
The key here is not to do what your competitors are doing, but to do what they are not doing. If they’ve built a successful brand using cartoons, for example, you might be able to convey the same information through hand-drawn images.
Likewise, if your competitor has a successful newsletter that’s all about pets, look at the animals they write about. If they focus on cute, furry mammals, you might create a new niche by writing about ugly pets.
Study competitors to see what works and then test your own unique version.
Innovative Branding Techniques in Newsletters
If there’s a single, universal branding rule that applies to every newsletter, it’s this: Don’t bore your readers.
Smart Nonsense explains academic subjects as if you were a 5-year-old, as they proudly claim on their landing page, and their graphic welcome email is one of those things you can’t unsee.
Many successful newsletters achieved their success by being quirky, funny, and irreverent, but there are also plenty of serious newsletters that provide interesting and high-quality information. For example, International Intrigue delivers news and in-depth analysis without any pictures of unicorns, and they do it in a conversational style that makes it easy to read.
If you’re publishing on a serious topic, quality and readability might be the essence of your brand.
Measuring the Success of Your Branded Newsletter
Setting Clear Branding Goals
Before you can know if your branded newsletter is a success, you have to know what success means to you.
Are you looking at the number of subscribers? The length of time they stay engaged? The frequency with which they share your newsletter or recommend it to friends?
Utilizing Subscriber Segmentation
Suppose you published a newsletter on cryptocurrency, and one week your header incorporated the Ethereum logo on Tuesday and the Bitcoin logo on Thursday.
Your data showed that about half of your list spent more time on the Ethereum newsletter and clicked through the links, while the other half engaged heavily with the Bitcoin edition.
In the future, you could segment your audience into Ethereum and Bitcoin fans and automatically deliver a better experience to both of them.
Improving Branding With A/B Testing
Designing A/B Tests for Brand Elements
If you’re unsure of your brand elements, A/B testing is the answer. If you were to create two different headers, you could send a newsletter with each header to half of your list. You could repeat this with your logo, colors, or any brand element that you choose to test.
Interpreting Engagement Metrics
An “engaged” reader is generally someone who reads your content and shows signs that they are actively thinking about it and interacting with it.
Engagement is a combination of several data points.
Open rates
Click-through rates
Replies/responses
Response to surveys or other interactive elements
Shares and recommendations
Repeated opens and clicks
Heat mapping or other analytics
You will be able to measure some or all of these, depending on which tools you use. Having appropriate analytics tools and clear goals will enable you to better interpret engagement metrics.
Analyzing newsletter engagement data will help you identify “choke points” where you might be losing readers.
For example, you might have a high open rate, but a heat map shows that readers are focusing their attention on a single section of your newsletter.
Using that data, you might stop writing some of the unpopular sections and emphasize the section that’s getting the most attention.
Over time, this could change your newsletter and create a more tightly-focused brand.
Gathering Subscriber Feedback
Possibly, the best way to get subscriber feedback is simply to ask for it. Surveys, polls, and even the request to “reply and tell us what you think” can lead to valuable insights.
Creating Feedback Loops With Subscribers
When you have enough feedback, you may want to make a significant change and test.
When you do, it helps to roll out the change with some fanfare.
Tell your subscribers, “You spoke, and we listened. We’re getting rid of x and adding more y. If you have a few seconds, please answer this poll and let us know how we’re doing.”
This approach is more likely to generate feedback than if you simply implement the change without saying anything.
Based on your subscribers’ response, you can make new changes and ask for feedback again. With each iteration, you’ll be improving your brand.
Tracking Branding Metrics
Benchmarking Against Industry Standards
Open rates and other metrics can vary by industry.
beehiiv recently published several benchmarks by industry, and you can see how you’re doing by comparing your results to those of your industry.
beehiiv was able to gather this data because over 25,000 newsletters across more than 100 industries use the beehiiv platform.
In fact, you can probably beat the standards for your industry with the help of a beehiiv newsletter.
The beehiiv platform has a unique no-code editor that allows you to customize every branding detail of your email from header to footer. You also get a closely integrated website where every issue of your newsletter is posted automatically.
beehiiv provides you with 3D analytics and also gives you the tools to monetize your branded newsletter through our ad network, boosts, and premium subscriptions.
So many newsletter brands have been successful using beehiiv. There’s literally an entire website dedicated to their success stories.
Your branded newsletter could be the next big story if you start a beehiiv newsletter today.
Frequently Asked Questions About Newsletter Branding
What Are the 3 Pillars That Go Into Designing a Great Newsletter?
Here are the 3 pillars that go into designing a great newsletter:
A strong newsletter brand
High-quality content
Consistency
A brand newsletter expresses the personality or “vibe” of your brand.
Your readers associate your brand with certain feelings or a style. Your brand newsletter is based on these feelings. It also reinforces them.
Everything from the content to the images and color of a brand newsletter expresses and supports the brand.
This makes your brand newsletter the opposite of many bland, corporate communications. Your brand newsletter might even be polarizing.
This polarization will attract loyal fans. It may also repulse people who are likely not to care about your brand. This actually helps you because it prevents your list from being cluttered with subscribers who are not engaged.
You can spice up your newsletter by taking a stand.
You’re on a mission. Your newsletter is perfect for a particular group of people. Make it easy for those people to spot you.
This is all a part of developing a strong newsletter brand.
When you’re clear about your brand, it’s easy to adopt the style and imagery that express that brand. Your choices around fonts, colors, logo, and design all become easier and more impactful when you have a strong brand.
A newsletter is an excellent marketing strategy.
You get to reach people who have literally signed up to hear from you. You can’t lose your subscribers the way you can lose followers on social media as the result of an algorithm change.
Whenever you have a new offer or a new Call to Action, all you have to do is type it up and hit “Send.”
A newsletter is an excellent marketing strategy as long as you have a plan.
You should know specifically who is meant to read your newsletter and what they will get by doing so. You should have content that appeals to your readers and promotes your business.
Once you’ve thought through all of this stuff, you will be able to create a powerful branded newsletter.
Reply