Using email newsletters as an inexpensive way to market your product or services is no secret and is being utilized by thousands of businesses across the globe. Internet users receive several newsletters in their inbox each day and most of them are deleted or directed to their junk mail boxes. With so many newsletters being passed along from email to email, a successful newsletter has to be different, it has to be unique, and it has to stand out from the crowd in a customers inbox.

There are two basic kinds of email newsletters. The first, colorful, standardized formats that appear as though they stepped right out of a magazine, are meant to basically look just like a website page. They're supposed to wow the reader and captivate them with their design in order to get the potential customer to read the text. These kinds of newsletters often contain a main article and several sidebars, all relating to the same subject, but meant to seem like a newspaper with a lot of different information.

The second kind of newsletter is based less on design and more on the content. These look less like generic advertisements and more like a personal email you receive from someone you know. Both formats deliver very different results but the likelihood of an email recipient reading a plain text formatted newsletter is much greater than the designed newsletter. This is mainly due to the fact that many consumers are trained to automatically view formatted and designed emails as spam and, therefore, unworthy of their time. When they open an email that contains only text, they're likely to read it a bit before they realize that, like the designed formats, it's a newsletter marketing to them the services or products of a business. Though some will stop reading when they realize it's a newsletter, if the content is captivating enough, many will continue on and become more interested in a business and their services.

If you send out periodic email newsletters and you're using a standardized newsletter template, consider switching it to a less structured and more conversational email. In the title, don't use the words "monthly newsletter" but something more unique and catchy. Make the subject and title of the email seem personal so that the recipient is more likely to open it or read the content.

The most important thing to remember about email newsletters is that you want to keep them as informal as possible. This applies particularly to the first few sentences, which can really grab a readers attention or disinterest them immediately. Though you may be tempted to write formal content to make your business and products seem great, the effort will be wasted if people don't read the newsletter at all. Appeal to your target customers as a friend, as someone who understands what they need and cares about giving it to them. If you approach potential customers as if they were you friends, they'll be more likely to purchase your services and you're business will be more of a success.