Beefree blog

What is a Newsletter? Purpose, Benefits, & Tips

Emily Santos
Emily Santos
Oct 25, 2023
What is a Newsletter? Purpose, Benefits, & Tips
What is a Newsletter? Purpose, Benefits, & Tips

In the bustling digital marketplace, newsletters have emerged as a pivotal communication tool.Newsletters serve as a way to ensure a steady flow of communication between businesses and their diverse audiences. They also serve their purpose as a way to promote products and services while establishing and nurturing relationships with customers.The versatility of newsletters, especially in email marketing, has proven to be indispensable in a marketer’s toolkit.

What is a Newsletter?

A newsletter is an email dispatched to a list of subscribers on a regular cadence. Its purpose is to provide subscribers with a digest of the latest updates, news, and content pertaining to a brand or industry.This format of communication is not just a vessel for information but also a strategy designed to keep the audience engaged, informed, and connected with the brand. According to Statista, 30% of marketers claimed that email marketing offers the highest ROI than any other marketing platform.The efficacy of email newsletters lies in their ability to deliver tailored content directly to individuals. The goal? That your brand remains etched in their minds.

What is the Purpose of a Newsletter?

The purpose of newsletters can be as varied and dynamic as the businesses that utilize them. While the overarching objective is maintaining a consistent and valuable communication channel with subscribers, the specific aims can diverge significantly.

  • Brand Awareness: Elevating and maintaining the brand’s presence in the minds of consumers.
  • Promotion: Highlighting new products, services, or offers to drive sales and engagement.
  • Education: Offering insights, tips, and valuable content related to the industry or product offerings.
  • Customer Retention: Nurturing existing customer relationships through exclusive content and offers.

Each organization should align its newsletter strategy with its unique goals. This will help ensure that the content sent to its subscribers is both purposeful and impactful.

What is the Importance of a Newsletter?

The importance of newsletters is multifaceted and offers a slew of advantages that extend beyond mere communication.

  • Direct Communication: With over 4 billion email users, newsletters facilitate a direct line of communication between the business and the consumer. 
  • Customer Engagement: Through consistent and valuable content, newsletters keep the audience engaged, fostering a stronger relationship between them and the brand. 
  • Traffic and Sales: By featuring products, offers, and content, newsletters drive traffic to the website, potentially catalyzing increased sales and customer interaction.
  • Audience Insights: Analyzing engagement and interaction with newsletters provides valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviors.

In essence, newsletters are a strategic asset, propelling businesses toward enhanced customer engagement, loyalty, and growth.

What’s in a Newsletter?

While crafting a newsletter, it’s important to understand the integral elements that come together to form an effective and engaging email. Each component within a newsletter plays a crucial role. Each is determined to help convey a message and influence an action, all while captivating and guiding the reader.From the initial greeting to the overall structure and CTA, each element is pivotal in the newsletter's efficacy and impact. Let’s dive into what brings a newsletter to life, ensuring it is not just read but experienced and interacted with by the audience.

Header and Branding Elements

The header, often adorned with the brand’s logo and a compelling title, serves as the initial handshake between the brand and the reader. It is said that brands have 8 seconds to attract consumers' attention, so this section plays an important role in setting the tone and establishing immediate brand recognition. It's not merely a visual element but a banner that heralds the brand’s identity and promise to its audience.

Content Sections and Modules

Content sections and modules within a newsletter help the email be digestible and seamlessly navigable. Each element should be curated to ensure the content is relevant to the reader. Employing varied content modules, such as articles, tips, or product highlights, ensures a rich and diverse content experience. The content should be laid out specifically to helpguide the reader through the newsletter and toward the desired action.

Visual Elements 

Visual elements in a newsletter are the silent communicators, conveying messages and emotions through imagery, color, and design. They enhance and complement the textual content and ensure the newsletter is read and experienced.Visuals are also a great way to break down content sections to support the reader to the desired action further. Utilizing high-quality images, consistent branding colors, and visually appealing design elements further embeds the brand into the reader's consciousness.When it comes to visuals and imagery, accessibility plays an essential role.

Stellar Example Newsletter

The following example comes from our very own template catalog. Our team of Designers, alongside our Email Marketer and Content Specialist, developed this template to maximize engagement. This template is perfect for organizations looking to send employees reminders and updates, welcome new team members, and celebrate special holidays - in this case, Mother's Day.Link to template: https://beefree.io/template/company-updates-mothers-day

The header

The newsletter begins with a header with a logo and a navigation bar that leads employees to learn more about news and events happening at their organization. The imagery used, as well as the text, provides immediate brand recognition and sets the stage for the content that unfolds.PRO tip: We suggest swapping out the illustration with an image of one of your company events for a more personalized newsletter

newsletter header

The layout

The content sections are structured to provide a seamless navigation through varied content types. The ease of readability ensures the message is conveyed and absorbed, providing value and fostering engagement among the readers. PRO tip: As seen in this template, use color to break down content blocks and make a more engaging newsletter. Be sure to use colors that are cohesive to your brand identity and allow the CTA to stand out.

The visuals

Visual elements are strategically interspersed to enhance the content. The images and icons throughout the newsletter are used to provide additional context and add a layer of engagement and interaction within the newsletter itself.

newsletter engaging visuals

The CTA Because this newsletter template is meant to offer different buckets of digestible information, the CTA's do vary; however, each one isnot just a directive but an invitation, enticing the reader to delve deeper.

newsletter CTA

The footerAs noted above, the footer in a newsletter is essential for compliance and to encourage engagement. Each Beefree footer is built to ensure both (but always refer back to your sending platform and your country's specific requirements to be sure).

compliant footer for newsletters

How to Create an Effective Newsletter

Creating a standout newsletter involves smart design and a solid content strategy. It's all about making sure your message doesn't just reach the reader but also connects and sparks engagement. Good design catches the eye, while strong content keeps the reader's attention. Let's dive into key practices that will help elevate your newsletter from a basic message to an engaging, interactive communication tool.

Define and Segment Your Target Audience

Understanding and segmenting your target audience is the cornerstone for effective newsletters. It allows brands to tailor relevant, valuable, and engaging content to the right audience. Begin by defining demographic and psychographic profiles. You can do this by requesting this information directly from your readers or by using the data provided by your email marketing platform.Then, segment your audience based on parameters such as purchase history, engagement level, or geographical location. Tailoring your content to meet groups' specific needs and interests enhances relevance, helping foster a more personalized connection.

Design a Captivating Template

A captivating newsletter should be aesthetically pleasing, reflective of your brand, and conducive to readability and navigation.At Beefree, we're huge advocates of how templates and email design systems can help you and your team save time. When you're creating newsletter templates, ensure that they are responsive and offer a seamless experience across various devices and platforms, as well as on-brand with your organization. If you need assistance getting started, explore Beefree’s newsletter templates and browse our myriad designs.

Create Engaging Subject Lines

The subject line is the gateway to your newsletter, and crafting one that is both compelling and engaging is paramount in ensuring your email is opened and read. An effective subject line should spark curiosity, convey value, and be succinct enough to be easily digestible. Utilize action words, pose questions, or create a sense of urgency to entice the reader to delve into the content that awaits within your newsletter.

Focus on Quality Content

Quality content should provide substance and value to your audience. It should be a blend of informative, entertaining, and actionable content to ensure readers derive tangible value with every interaction. As mentioned earlier, for more general newsletters (like our Email Design Blog Newsletter), combining a mix of articles, tips, and product highlights helps the audience choose the content that is relevant to them. A reminder that the content that you add should still be relevant to your brand and business objectives.

Additional Newsletter Information

Here are some additional tips that can help you elevate your email marketing endeavors and improve your strategy for newsletter creation:

  • Consistency in Sending: Establish and adhere to a consistent sending schedule to build anticipation and reliability among your audience.
  • Balance Between Visuals and Text: Ensure a harmonious blend of text and visuals to create an engaging yet easily digestible newsletter.
  • Personalization: Utilize subscriber data to tailor content and create a more personalized and relevant experience for each reader.
  • Mobile Responsiveness: All emails should be design to render correctly on all screen sizes to cater to on-the-go readers and enhance user experience.
  • A/B Testing: Employ A/B testing to understand subscriber preferences and optimize content for enhanced engagement and conversion.

How to Measure Newsletter Performance

Understanding and analyzing key metrics sheds light on the current performance and paves the way for optimizing future newsletters. Here are some pivotal metrics to consider:

  • Open Rate: Monitor how many subscribers are opening your newsletter to gauge initial interest and the effectiveness of your subject line.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): Analyzing the CTR provides insights into how engaging and compelling your content and CTAs are to your readers.
  • Conversion Rate: Track the actions taken by the CTAs in your newsletter to understand how effectively it’s driving desired outcomes.
  • Bounce Rate: Keep an eye on the bounce rate to ensure your emails are successfully delivered and identify potential issues.
  • Unsubscribe Rate: Monitoring unsubscribe rates can provide insights into subscriber satisfaction and content relevance.

These metrics serve as a compass, guiding your newsletter strategy toward enhanced engagement, relevance, and impact. By continuously monitoring and adapting based on these insights, your newsletters will reach, resonate, engage, and convert your intended audience.

Newsletter Information FAQ

Let's dive into the world of newsletters with some handy FAQs! Whether you're curious about the different kinds of newsletters, their key parts, or why they're crucial for content marketing, we've got answers.Below, we explore common questions to help guide you through the ins and outs of creating and using newsletters effectively.

What are the Three Types of Newsletters?

The three primary types of newsletters are informational (focused on sharing news and updates), promotional (highlighting products, services, or offers), and relational (geared towards building and nurturing customer relationships).

What are Three Main Components of a Newsletter?

The three main components of a newsletter are the header (including title and logo), the main content (articles, updates, and promotions), and the footer (contact information, social links, and unsubscribe option).

Why is a Newsletter Important for a Content Marketing Strategy?

Newsletters are vital for content marketing. They provide businesses a cost effective way to consistently engage with their audience, nurture leads, and establish authority in their respective industries.

What is the Basic Structure of a Newsletter?

The basic structure of a newsletter consists of a headline or title, an introductory section, the main content (which can be a mix of articles, updates, and promotions), and a closing or footer section with essential links and contact information.

What are the Advantages of a Newsletter?

Newsletters offer several advantages, such as keeping audiences informed and promoting products or services. When done right, they are also effective tools for building brand loyalty, driving website traffic, and enhancing customer engagement and retention.

Start Creating Engaging and High-Performing Newsletters with Beefree

The key to crafting successful newsletters lies in the ability to create visually appealing, responsive, and user-friendly designs. That's where Beefree, a versatile email builder, comes into play.With Beefree, you can take your newsletter game to the next level. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just getting started, Beefree offers the tools and templates you need to captivate your audience and achieve your goals. The best part? It's free! Sign up today. 

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We’ve all been there: You craft the perfect email, hit “send”, and just as you settle into the satisfaction of a job well done, someone slacks you: “Hey, something doesn’t look right with that campaign.” 

If this sounds familiar, you should know that you’re not alone: According to the 2025 Really Good Email Survey “90% of email marketers say they have a history of noticing mistakes in their emails after they’ve hit the send button.

This becomes especially common when your team constantly juggles multiple campaigns or makes edits until the last minute. Sadly, even the smallest mistakes don’t just slip through the cracks; they cost you.

Luckily for us all, mistakes can be avoided. And no, not by lighting a Pre-Send Protection Candles™ and hoping for the best. But rather by equipping your team with the right tools that work with your team – not slow them down. Let’s talk about it!

Building your team’s safety net for mistake-free emails with Beefree 

When everyone involved in the email creation process is aligned and supported by smart systems, executing mistake-free emails becomes second nature. Instead of scrambling to do damage control, you’ll want to set up the tools and processes that help your team focus on what they do best: creating emails that connect, convert, and confidently represent the brand.

In this article, we’ll discuss how you can use Beefree to: 

  • Reduce human errors 
  • Implement systems of checks and balances 
  • Establish guardrails & frameworks for on-brand email design

1. Catch mistakes before they happen with Smart Check

Missing links that lead nowhere? Forgotten subject lines? HTML emails that get clipped in Gmail? It’s easy to make little mistakes that derail your campaign’s performance. 

Learn more about Smart Check → 

Beefree’s Smart Check automatically checks your designs and alerts you of any red flags so you can fix them before they cost you opens, clicks, or conversions. Think of Smart Check as your built-in QA partner who will catch:

  • Missing links
  • Heavy images that could slow down email load times
  • Missing subjects & preheaders that impact engagement
  • Missing alt text on images that hurt your email’s accessibility
  • Large HTML files that might affect deliverability (or get clipped in Gmail)

2. Keep every email on-brand with built-in guardrails 

Most of us don’t nail the perfect campaign on the first try. Great emails are a team effort. However, when multiple teams are involved in the email creation process, branding can quickly go off the rails. 

A misused font, clashing colors, or buttons that are too small to click don’t just make emails look disjointed—they can damage your brand’s credibility.

With Beefree’s Advanced Style Kit, you can set clear, predefined guidelines for fonts, colors, spacing, and more—so every design starts on the right foot. Once configured, all new emails automatically inherit your brand styles, reducing the need for constant oversight and minimizing errors.

Advanced user permissions let you lock down specific design elements, giving you full control over what can (and can’t) be edited. That means anyone on your team—regardless of design expertise—can confidently create emails that look and feel like your brand.

3. Empower your team to create with confidence with reusable content

When your team isn’t bogged down by the cumbersome process of creating content from scratch (or fear of going off-brand), they can move faster—and with far more confidence.

With Saved and Synced Rows, you can provide your team with pre-approved content blocks—like headers, footers, and other commonly used design elements—that they can use in their designs without creating them from scratch. That ensures design consistency, eliminates redundant work, and makes email creation a lot faster.

Learn more about Saved Rows → 

4. Ensure your team is aligned with centralized reviews and approvals:

Creating the perfect email often takes a team of designers, copywriters, marketers, and other team members working together. But when multiple people are involved, endless back-and-forth and feedback scattered across multiple conversations and channels can slow things down, lead to miscommunication, and ultimately cause mistakes. 

With Beefree’s built-in commenting, your team can collaborate and share feedback where the work is actually happening—right inside the builder. And if you’d like to involve external reviewers into the review process, you can do that as well. 

Learn more about commenting → 

Plus, with Beefree’s built-in Approval flow, you can ensure your designs are reviewed and approved by the right stakeholders. Stay aligned with real-time notifications on design changes, lock edits on approved content, and get a clear view of project status for smoother team collaboration and high-quality results.

Learn more about Approvals →

5. Need an additional pair of eyes? Use the power of AI to support your team

Take some weight off your team's shoulders and use AI to support them in the final stretch. Whether it’s catching typos, flagging inconsistencies, or suggesting optimization, AI can be a saving grace when deadlines are creeping in.

For those times when you can’t remember the difference between “there, their, and they’re,  Beefree’s  AI Writing Assistant is there to help. This eager-to-learn helper can  review your copy for grammatical errors, tone of voice, and even share suggestions for making it just a bit more compelling. Our AI Writing Assistant can also seamlessly translate content or automatically generate ALT text for images to enhance the accessibility of your emails. 

Learn more about AI-powered content creation in Beefree →

The tangible cost of email mistakes

Mistakes don’t just impact performance; they slowly erode credibility. What starts as a small oversight can be a massive inconvenience for your readers, sending them straight to the unsubscribe button. As for your team, mistakes chip away at their confidence. Instead of brainstorming for the next campaign, they’re scrambling trying to figure out how to do damage control.   

When done right, email is a powerful tool for connecting with your audience. But a single mistake can unravel that connection and undermine trust.

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  • An off-brand design can make your brand look disorganized
  • An email that gets clipped in Gmail because it’s too big means some subscribers might never see the full email content.

Design error-free emails and send with confidence with Beefree 

Beefree helps teams of all sizes create polished, on-brand emails—without the risk of costly errors. With built-in safeguards, streamlined approval flows, and collaboration tools that keep everyone aligned, Beefree acts as your team’s system of checks and balances. From first draft to final sign-off, you’ll have everything you need to send with confidence, build trust, and get results.

Try Beefree's Business for free for 15 days and get access to all of Beefree’s tools that help you catch mistakes, streamline collaboration, and send with confidence every time. Or schedule a call with one of our experts to discover everything Beefree can support your team.

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Marketo Engage is a powerful tool for marketing automation, but when it comes to email design flexibility, many users find its built-in editor limiting. Creating visually compelling, mobile-responsive emails often requires custom coding or workarounds, slowing down workflow and making it harder to execute high-quality campaigns efficiently.

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Frequently asked questions on using Beefree with Marketo Engage

Can I use Beefree with other ESPs besides Marketo Engage?

Yes! You can connect Beefree to any ESP, MAP, or CRM including Mailchimp, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and others. To learn more about how to integrate Beefree to your sending platform watch the video below: 

For a full list of our native integrations visit [https://beefree.io/integrations].

Are there any limitations when exporting Beefree emails to Marketo?

Yes, there are a few important limitations to be aware of:

  • Charset emojis are not supported in Marketo. Including emojis in your email content may result in an error. To prevent this, Beefree automatically replaces unsupported emojis with a placeholder. For more details, refer to the [Marketo documentation on emoji support].

Preheader text is not a native field in Marketo. However, Beefree includes it by embedding the preheader directly in the email's HTML code during export.

Additional resources and links

Why you should use Beefree with Marketo Engage

By integrating Beefree with Marketo Engage, marketing teams gain a faster, more flexible way to build high-converting, on-brand email campaigns—while leveraging Marketo’s powerful automation and analytics to track performance and optimize results.

  • Design responsive, professional emails with ease.
  • Maintain brand consistency across every message.
  • Collaborate efficiently and gain insights to improve campaign performance.

Ready to elevate your Marketo email marketing? Try Beefree today and streamline your entire email creation process.

Start your 15-day free Business trial today!

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