Picture this. You open up your mobile phone first thing in the morning. You are bombarded with 15 email notifications from 8 email newsletters, 4 subscription products, and 3 from your closest associates
Which are you more likely to open first?
Of course, the 3 emails from your closest associates win your attention as they’re the people whom you trust the most. Once you’re done with it, you’ll probably start skimming the other newsletter subject lines
Now you come across this newsletter creator whose content you’ve seen on social media just 2 days back and your business friends have always raved about their content
Without a second thought, you just click the email and open it. This is a huge win for you as a newsletter creator
The biggest problem for newsletter creators isn’t just about low click-through-rates, it is that your emails wouldn’t even get opened in the first place
Now this explains why you need to build trust with your audience to stay on top. Let’s see how
How to build trust with your audience?
- Use social media to nurture relationships
The biggest advantage of having a social presence on platforms like Twitter and Linkedin is that you easily get on top of people’s minds
Even if they ignored your email issue sent out on that day, they’ll be reminded to read it once they see your content in their social media feed and notice positive comments from other subscribers who read your newsletter
Yes, people enjoying your newsletter becomes social proof!
- Sprinkle social proof in your newsletter issues
Your subscribers would have enthusiastically signed up for your newsletter a month ago. But as time goes on, they might eventually lose enthusiasm due to various reasons (More new newsletter subscriptions could be one of the reasons)
As a newsletter creator, it’s important that you remind your readers of the love your newsletter gets and why your newsletter is valuable to the reader
Testimonials come in super handy in such cases. Simply use comments, and messages you receive from your readers, screenshot them, and add them at the end of your newsletters
Another trick is to add them to the end by mentioning “Shoutouts from readers” and linking it to all the testimonials on a separate webpage
- Offer to help your newsletter subscribers
Apart from sending your regular newsletter issues, create a separate newsletter issue for your readers offering to answer their questions
For example, if you’re a creator helping out entrepreneurs grow their audience on Linkedin, simply ask what’s been the biggest blocker for them to increase their following recently & what have they done so far
You’re so far ahead of other creators even if you do this “Ask me Anything” session once a month. Your readers will always remember you and your help
This will also spread the positive word about your newsletter
- Show them you care about subscribers
More often than not, you might have incorporated some feedback you received from your newsletter subscribers. It could be about the length of your posts, new format etc.
Simply mention that you made a change and name the subscriber who provided the feedback on your issues.
This will create a positive impression in your readers’ minds that you actively read their newsletters and they’ll be happy to stay subscribed since they’d not want to miss out on future content which would be improvised based on feedback from other readers like them.
Remember building trust is a long-term game. It takes quite a while for people to trust you.
Just think from your reader’s perspective about the things no other newsletter is doing & how you can add value to their lives
You’ll end up garnering a lot of trust & reputation eventually
About the Author:
Goutham Jay is the founder of famewall.io which makes it super easy to collect testimonials from customers & display them as social proof in multiple ways
The topic of social proof is super exciting for him as he’s served businesses all over the world for 8+ months & helped them increase their sales
