Email is one of the most profitable marketing channels. It gives a better return for each dollar spent compared to other channels. In fact, according to Litmus, for every dollar that marketers spend on email marketing, they get $36 in return on average. Email marketing is also expected to become more efficient because of an increasing number of email users. According to a Radicati Group Study, more than half of the world’s population uses email right now. The figure is expected to grow to 4.6 billion by the end of 2025.
Email marketing also helps greatly in the overall brand-building process. Many expert marketers and brand managers think of it as having a conversation with the customer. It helps the brand remind the customer of its existence and turn that initial interest into loyalty. In addition, email marketing also increases the likelihood of receiving feedback from customers and increases engagement which helps brand managers understand their brands better.
Email marketing is also a powerful tool for bloggers and publications who use newsletters to provide their readers with valuable information and drive the action that they need them to perform. However, not every newsletter generates the same result. An interactive newsletter increases the probability of click-throughs and generating desired action. This is why we have brought you a list of the 15 interactive newsletter ideas that will drive your click-through rates. Yet, before looking at the list, let’s take a deeper look at why you should use an interactive newsletter.
Interactive newsletters combine the power of email marketing campaigns and interactive content marketing to deliver impactful results. We have already seen how email marketing is an effective tool, but the merits of interactive content marketing are what make interactive newsletters a powerful marketing tool. Interactive content marketing has been a popular marketing tool for at least the last eight years.
A survey by the Content Marketing Institute in 2016 found that 75% of respondents that use interactive content say that they anticipate their company to increase the utilization of interactive content marketing. Content marketing, as a whole, is quite popular as, according to the Content Marketing Institute, average B2B organizations spend 28%, whereas B2C organizations spend 25% of their budget on content marketing. The reason why companies spend a substantial portion of their budget on interactive content marketing is because it is useful in converting visitors.
One of the challenges with interactive newsletters is that they might get a little complicated to execute, especially for solo blog owners. The good news is that there is already a plethora of tools that use artificial intelligence to make it easier to execute interactive email marketing campaigns. As we highlighted in our piece about the most influential newsletters in 2024, marketers have been significantly integrating artificial intelligence to improve their email marketing capabilities.
Many newsletter generators let marketers create a visually stunning and engaging newsletter through the use of prompts. One of the elements of an interactive newsletter is personalization. While it is easy to personalize email newsletters with recipients’ names, many AI tools go a step further and personalize emails according to how the reader has interacted with your emails and blog.
With that backdrop, let’s look at 15 interactive newsletter ideas that will drive your click-through rates.
Methodology
To curate our list of the 15 interactive newsletter ideas that will drive your click-through rates, we went through several articles by industry experts and online forums such as Reddit. However, there was not enough data to objectively rank each idea, so we did not rank our list for this article.
15 – Include How To Guides
How-to guides are an excellent way to increase click-through rates. They get people involved in the newsletter, which can easily lead to a conversion as readers who follow through a how-to guide are highly likely to click a desired link.
How-to guides can be implemented by almost anyone with an online newsletter. For example, a gardening blog can include a how-to guide about pruning, which will also highlight the importance of having good-quality pruning shears. Then somewhere at the end of the guide or while mentioning pruning shear, the newsletter can link to the blog’s article about how to choose a good quality pruning shear.
14 – Create Exclusive Events
Exclusive events are quite an interactive newsletter idea to drive click-through rates. These events can be anything from an online webinar to an exclusive blog page that is only available through a link in the newsletter.
The important point here is to maintain exclusivity while also delivering value to your reader. People love to feel exclusive. However, the newsletter should also promise something of value and deliver it. If the event fails to deliver something of value, the same readers who followed through the link initially will be highly unlikely to do so in the future.
There are several ways how this could be achieved. For example, a digital marketing blog can link to a secret article about a lesser-known SEO strategy to get legitimate backlinks easily.
13 – Embed Interactive Quiz
Interactive quizzes will entertain your readers while also increasing the likelihood that they click through the links. However, the quiz must be fun, otherwise, it might just look like another test that the readers may not be willing to take.
Quizzes that reveal a certain personality of the person are one of the surefire ways to get your readers interested. For example, a self-help blog can include a personality test and then link to their best-suited blog articles according to the revealed personality. E-commerce or affiliate blogs can incorporate product recommendation quizzes that will recommend products according to the needs of the reader. These quizzes also offer a way to deal with choice overload for the customer.
12 – Include a Calculator
Including a calculator is one of the best ways to make your newsletter interactive and drive clickthrough rates. However, while this tactic can be utilized by all newsletters, some are better suited than others. A weight loss blog, for example, can include a BMI calculator and then recommend articles related to the BMI index of the reader. A personal finance website, on the other hand, can include a mortgage calculator and then recommend an article that shares tips on how to reduce mortgage rates.
11 – Include a Scratchable Coupon Code
There is more than one way to make your newsletter readers feel exclusive, and including a scratchable coupon code is one of them. You can offer your subscribers a coupon code in a scratchable form. The coupon code can come with an animation that makes it feel like it is being scratched for real. It can contain a discount code for your products. If you are an affiliate blog, it can also be your affiliate discount code for products online. It is also a good way to offer a discount for a new service that you might be starting. The possibilities here are endless.
10 – Include Image Carousel
Image carousels, when done right, can spike your reader’s interest resulting in increased click-through rates. Image carousels may contain elements that compel the reader to follow through the images, which might lead to a specific link. You must ask your reader for an action right when their attention and curiosity are at the maximum.