How do I write a newsletter, step by step?#
Five steps, in this order. Each one has to be finished before the next starts, because each one describes work already done rather than work you intend to do.
- Say what the reader knows at the end that they do not know now. One sentence. If you cannot produce that sentence, the issue has no subject yet and writing it is a waste of your morning.
- Collect the material: the date, the number, the quote, the photograph, the thing that changed since the last time you wrote. Five scraps on a page beat an hour of staring at a blank one.
- Write the body in the order the facts happened, then re-order it in the order the reader needs them. Those two orders are rarely the same.
- Write the introduction, three sentences, and then delete the first one.
- Write the subject line and the pre-header together, as one sentence delivered in two places.
The reason for the order is that an introduction written before the body is a promise about an email that does not exist yet. It fills itself with greetings, apologies and a recap of who the sender is, because there is nothing else to say about a document with no contents.
What is the one thing in a newsletter?#
The one thing is a sentence the reader could repeat to somebody else. The survey closed with 214 answers. The hall booking went from a fortnight to three days. The collection total was £1,840 and it paid for the ramp.
We had a good month is not a thing, because nobody can act on it, remember it, or tell anyone else. A sentence that only works in the room it was written in is the sender being kept company, not the reader being told something.
A weekly issue holds one thing and two or three short notes underneath it. A monthly letter holds one thing and a proper section of leftovers. When a draft has four items that each need their own introduction, that is four issues, and how often you should send decides which one goes first.
How do I write a newsletter introduction?#
The introduction has one job: tell the reader what this issue contains and why it is worth their next ninety seconds. Three sentences, written after the body exists so that it can describe something real.
What fills the space when a writer does not know what to say is the sender's own state. Apologies for the late one. Excitement about the new look. A reminder that the summer term is very busy. All of it is true and none of it is news to the person holding the phone.
The pattern that holds: what changed, why that matters to the reader, and what to do about it. Delete the sentence before those three, which is nearly always throat-clearing, and the introduction is finished.
The subject line works the same way from the other end, and email subject line examples are built on the same rule: the fact in the first words, because the rest gets cut.
How do I write a newsletter article?#
An article inside a newsletter is not a blog post with a picture pasted above it. It is one point held up by evidence, told in the number of words a reader will give you on a bus.
- The first line states the point, not the topic. The recycling contract was renewed is a point. Some news about recycling is a topic.
- Two or three short paragraphs of the interesting detail, the part a reader would repeat.
- One fact they cannot get anywhere else: the number, the quote, the before and after.
- The next step, or where to look for the whole thing. One link, placed where the sentence that earns it ends.
Write it in short paragraphs, two sentences to a block. Long paragraphs are readable in a design with room to breathe and they are a wall on a phone screen, and most of your readers are on a phone. The word budget that fits your cadence is in how long a newsletter should be.
How do I write a newsletter article about an event?#
Event articles fail in one particular way. The writer went to the last one and loves it, the reader did not, and the piece opens with how the committee feels about the gala before it says when the gala is. Somebody deciding in four seconds whether this concerns them needs the date, not the affection.
So the practical facts go at the top and the colour goes underneath, once the reader has the ability to say yes. Answer their questions in the order they ask them.
| What the reader is asking | What belongs in the article | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| What is it? | A name a stranger can picture, not an internal one | The first line |
| When is it? | Day, date and clock time, written out | First or second line |
| Where? | The place, and the door you use | Inside the first three lines |
| What does it cost? | The number, and free if it is free | Where it would be rude to hide it |
| Why should I bother? | What happens there, in plain words | Underneath the facts |
| How do I come? | One instruction and one link or phone number | Twice: after the facts, and at the end |
Put the ask in the first screen. A reader who has to scroll to find the ticket link has already decided this is a report about an event rather than an invitation to one.
What does a newsletter sample look like?#
Here is the version most people write first.
Every word of that is about the sender and the reader has learned nothing they can use. The same article written for the person reading it.
Same warmth, same committee, same fete. The second one can be read in eight seconds, remembered and repeated to a neighbour, and it tells a stranger how to arrive. That is the difference between a sample of a newsletter and a sample of an announcement about feelings.
Can I copy a newsletter sample?#
Copy the shape and never the sentences. The shape worth taking is the order: point, detail, proof, ask. Somebody who reads your issue next to the one it was modelled on notices the sentences, and a reader who is noticing your source is not thinking about your news.
Read three issues of a newsletter you open and write down what each one did in its first four lines rather than what it said. That exercise teaches more than any list of examples, because it shows you the structure while it is still working on you as a reader.
How do I write a newsletter template?#
A template is the list of questions you have to answer each issue, in the order they get answered. It is not a design and it is not a colour scheme. The design holds the words. The template makes sure the words are there.
- The masthead line: the name, the issue number, the date.
- The one thing, in two or three paragraphs.
- In brief: three items of one sentence each, with a link on the one that needs it.
- The article, using the shape above.
- The date worth writing down, if there is one.
- One ask. One, not a menu.
- The sign-off strip: who wrote it, and how to reply.
Keep it in a document you duplicate rather than one you keep editing, so last month's issue survives as raw material for this one. How to run a newsletter from Google Docs walks that pattern, and making one in Word covers the same trick through a different program.
How do I write a newsletter on Substack?#
Substack is an editor and a mailer with the publishing decisions taken out of your hands: the archive page, the subscribe button and the feed all exist before you set anything up. The writing is the same craft as any issue, with one difference worth knowing before you start.
The difference is where the reader arrives from. Many of them come from the platform rather than from your subject line, so the top of the post does the work your introduction usually does, and the first screen has to carry the point on its own.
What their editor offers today, what it costs, and what happens to your subscriber list if you leave are Substack's answers, and they change without anybody updating a blog post about it. Read their own pages before you build a plan on any of those three. If the list is the asset, how you export it is a question you want answered in writing rather than guessed at.
How do I write a newsletter on LinkedIn?#
A LinkedIn newsletter is a post with a subscription attached to your profile or your page. The people who see it are those already connected to you plus whoever the platform decides to show it to, and it is read inside LinkedIn rather than in an inbox.
That is real reach, and it is reach you are borrowing. How many people see it is decided by what the platform is doing that week, and the edition lives somewhere you do not control. Write for it as a distribution channel and treat the email address as the thing you are trying to earn.
Practically: shorter than an email issue, the point in the first two lines, and one clear reason to hand over an address, because growing a list you can send to is a different job from collecting followers.
Should I write the same issue for Substack, LinkedIn and email?#
Write it once and publish it in an order that suits the piece, trimming each version for the place it lands in. The three differ on three axes that matter more than the editor you type into.
| The question | Your own email list | Substack | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who sees it first? | The people who gave you their address | Your subscribers and the platform's readers | Your followers and whatever the feed decides |
| Where is it read? | In an inbox you can test on a phone | In an app and in an inbox | Inside the platform |
| Who owns the archive? | You do, on a domain you control | The platform holds the reading surface | The platform holds it entirely |
| If the tool changes its rules | You move the list and the design with it | Depends on what their export does that month | The audience stays exactly where it is |
| Best used for | The thing you need acted on | Long pieces you want found and shared | Reaching people who have never heard of you |
The order that works for most senders: send it to the list, then post it where the list is not. An email address is the only one of those three you can carry to another tool.
Which comes first, the design or the writing?#
Write the issue as plain text, then put it into a design. When the design comes first, the empty boxes decide what you write, and a template with four image slots produces four images nobody needed.
Plain text is also the honest test. If the draft is not interesting with no pictures, no colour and no layout, then the issue has nothing in it, and no template is going to supply one.
How do I write a newsletter when I have nothing to say?#
Three sources that are not your own opinion. The questions people asked you this week, which are the same questions a lot of people were too busy to ask. The numbers you already hold, which become news the moment you write them down next to last time. And the thing that changed that nobody has told anyone about yet, however small it looks from the inside.
A short issue about one small fact beats an empty issue about nothing. Frequency is the harder thing to keep, so a two-hundred-word note that arrives on the day you promised is worth more than the long one that arrives three weeks late.
Should the voice be the same every issue?#
Yes, and choose it deliberately rather than ending up with it by accident. Some part of the reason a person opens the same letter every week is that they know whose voice they are getting.
Pick the tone you can hold for fifty issues, which is usually drier than the one you write on the day you are excited. A newsletter written in highs and lows reads as whoever had the loudest week, and it makes the quiet ones feel like a letdown.
How do I cut a newsletter draft?#
- Delete every adjective that reports a feeling instead of a fact. Thrilling and massive describe the sender. The number of homes sold describes the email.
- Delete the first paragraph and see whether anything is missing. It usually is not.
- Read each sentence alone, out of context. If it only makes sense because the one before it exists, merge them.
- Move the ask up. Then move the date up.
- Cut a tenth. If the issue was 900 words, make it 810 and see whether the reader can tell. They cannot, and you will know which sentences were never load-bearing.
Do I edit before or after sending it to myself?#
Send it to yourself first, then edit. You cannot see what an email looks like in the program you wrote it in, and the problems worth fixing are layout problems: the heading that wraps into three lines, the picture that arrives as a download prompt, the table that pushes a column off the right edge.
Open it on a phone rather than on the screen you composed it on, and then read the same issue in a second inbox. A design that survives one mail app often breaks in another, and your readers do not all use the software you do.
What is the pre-send check that catches mistakes?#
Five checks, worth running whether you wrote the issue by hand or a machine wrote the first draft for you.
- Every name and detail field is filled. A token that did not merge sends a stranger their own placeholder, and it reads as automated because it was.
- The subject line and the pre-header make one sentence, and neither repeats the other.
- Every ask has exactly one link, and that link works when clicked from a phone.
- The date, the place and the cost appear in the first screen if an event is in the issue.
- Everyone on the list asked to be there. A list nobody consented to is not a small audience, it is a complaint waiting to happen, and double opt-in covers the way to prove it.
Campaign Kicker checks the unfilled variables and the consent record before a send leaves, and will not mail an address that has no proof behind it. It cannot fix a dull paragraph and it does not claim to.
What are the most common newsletter writing mistakes?#
- Writing the introduction before the body, so it describes an email that does not exist yet.
- Four separate subjects in one issue, which is four issues badly fitted together.
- The date of the event in the last paragraph.
- Sentences about how busy, excited or apologetic the sender is.
- Three calls to action in a letter that wanted one.
- Sending the design without reading it on a phone first.
Write the issue where the check runs. Campaign Kicker gives you 13 designs, a pre-send check that flags unfilled variables and addresses with no consent behind them, and reports that say whether anybody read what you wrote. The free plan mails 5,000 emails a month and holds as many names as you have, no card.
Write and send the issue