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So you've read all the newsletters hype, haven't you?

It's true, newsletters made their comeback just like they did in the 90s (who knew bell bottoms would ever become a thing again …). Newsletters are springing up like weeds and it seems like the chance of getting into the hype is limited. ⏳

But that doesn't mean you should rush to put together a newsletter. As with any marketing strategy, you don't want to glue it together and hope it works. You want to strategize how to curate a newsletter that turns subscribers into customers.

What's the most useful content you can give subscribers that will ALSO include them in your offering?

Let's find out by answering three questions.

# 1: What challenges does your customer avatar have in terms of the issues your products fix?

Before you write a word with newsletter content, you need to know why you are writing it. The goal of attracting newsletter subscribers is to turn them into customers. You should be very aware of this when figuring out what content to include in your newsletter.

Since you lead your subscribers in a set path, you want your content to support your offer / products. For example, at DigitalMarketer we have a weekly newsletter called DM Insider with 4 sections:

• Quick strategy and / or guidance
• A useful tool
• 5 things that are happening in the marketing world right now
• Wipe the file with templates they can access

Each of these sections help our subscribers with their marketing challenges. Our subscribers need general business and marketing help, want to know which tools can get their job done faster, need to stay abreast of what's going on in the digital marketing world, and need to know which templates work best for headers, landing pages, social content etc.

This leads our subscribers straight to our products, membership levels that make them better marketers. At the end of our DM Insider newsletter, subscribers read the following:

Your newsletter content is at the top of the funnel. It must serve as a path to your products and offers. By curating content that will help your subscribers with the challenges they face in solving their problems, you are giving them the flashlight that will lead them down the path you have created. 🔦

Before proceeding to the next section, make a list of the challenges your customer avatar has in relation to the issues your products fix.

Using the customer avatar worksheet, we were able to find out what challenges our customer avatars faced in the context of digital marketing.

# 2: How can you turn these challenges into regular content?

Now that you know what challenges your customer avatar is facing, it's time to figure out how to turn those challenges into regular content.

There are three ways to do this:

1. Write your own content on these challenges
2. Link to other publications writing about these challenges
3. Write your own content + link to other publications

We do both: We curate our own content and link to other publications.

Here's another example: Our customer avatar needs marketing help. The very first part of our newsletter is a business or marketing strategy / guide that he can use today. We want this to be quick and useful advice that will show you how much we know about our stuff.

The third part of our newsletter (after showing our subscribers a tool that we really love) highlights content from other publications. Here is an example of one of the Inside 5 sections from a previous newsletter:

We'll highlight the part of the articles that our avatars find most useful but make sure you link to the original source so our subscribers can read the entire article if they're interested. The Inside 5 section of our newsletter keeps our subscribers up to date on everything they need to know about the marketing world right now. This takes the strain off them tremendously as they also try to run a business and keep up with their ongoing campaigns. 😅

Turning your customer avatar's challenges into content is the main driving force behind your newsletter. That's what makes them sign up.

Get your list of challenges and next to each one, then figure out how to make content out of those challenges. 💡

# 3: How would your customer avatar want this information to be presented to them?

You know what challenges your customer avatar is facing. You figured out what content will help you solve some of these challenges. Now is the time to figure out how you are going to present this information to them.

This is a fancy way of saying, which newsletter template are you going to use?

Let's just remind you again that the RIGHT choice is the template you want your customer avatar to use for you.

For DM Insider, we know that our customer avatar doesn't want a 30-minute reading of the latest marketing results. They want quick quibi-style bites that they can read, ponder, and then apply for the rest of their day. We have set up our newsletter in the template that works best for our customer avatar: 4 sections with useful, easy-to-digest content.

Other newsletters can definitely get away with writing long-form articles of 2,000+ words that their subscribers absolutely love. Other newsletters may find that a short newsletter that just cites different sources does the trick.

It's all about your subscriber.

How do you find out which template is suitable for your newsletter?

Ask your customer avatar. Create 2-3 templates for them to choose from, then ask them which one they prefer. Here's who you can ask:

• Social media followers
• Current subscribers
• Current customers

Remember: your newsletter was written for your customer avatar. Your opinion is most valuable when it comes to choosing which template to post every day, week, or month.

Now that these 3 questions have been answered, you now know exactly what content to include in your newsletter. You're not guessing – you know this is what your customer avatar is going to love.

And it will help turn them into customers one day.