– I want you to think about the last time you ignored a digital or printed newsletter. Did it fail to grab your attention with a poor layout or generic images? Maybe there was just too much text. Whatever it was, don't make the same mistake
with your newsletter. Stick around and I'll show you how to design a newsletter
that gets attention. (soft upbeat music) Hey, I'm Rebecca and I'm a senior community
manager here at Canva. And I help business
owners grow their brands. In this tutorial, I'm going to share tips
for creating newsletters and why you should use them
in your marketing strategy. Did you know, newsletters are one of the best tools for staying connected to your customers and building their brand loyalty? On average, email
newsletters have an open rate of 20 to 30%, which is far greater than
engagement rates on social media. We'll cover printed newsletters, too, which are less popular these days but engagement is often
higher, a lot higher.
First, let's talk about
designing for your audience. Are you creating a newsletter for your employees, your customers, or other stakeholders like
suppliers or investors? This will determine the style
and format of your newsletter. For example, for customers, you may want to include a lots of visuals to keep them engaged, whereas a staff bulletin
could be stripped back to communicate the bare essentials. Stakeholders might be more
interested in seeing stats.
So some nice data visualization
is what you are looking for. Let's explore this in more
detail with Canva Templates. Type newsletter into the
search field on the homepage. Scrolling through, you'll see some are more
text-based than others. These are all front page designs. But when I hover my cursor over the top, it'll show additional
pages if they are included. It's good to have your newsletter content written beforehand, at
least in draft form. That way you'll know roughly how much space
is needed for the text and can identify the ideal template. When choosing a template, I consider layout before anything else. I think about what I'm
trying to communicate and which elements on the
page can help me do that. I'll consider how many sections I'll need to fit in all the information
without creating clutter. Notice how most templates are
split into halves or thirds. This creates some blank
space to avoid overcrowding. If you do plan on changing
the layout of a design or starting from scratch, I recommend sticking to this rule.
If you find the perfect layout, but you don't like the color scheme, that's easy to change. The same goes with fonts and images. It is much easier to
start off with a template that you can customize than starting with a blank page. It'll also save you time and allow you to focus on smaller details. We'll begin with a printed newsletter. And let's say you have a lot
of information to get across. Now, it might depend on your printer, but I would suggest making
a double-sided design. That's going to make
the best use of space. Here's a free template
that is very text-heavy. It's only one page. So let's spread it across two pages to make it more engaging. I'm going to make it into a
newsletter for a local gym. The first thing I'm going to do is get some more fitness and
equipment images in here. Just do a search here in the Elements tab. Awesome. Here's some good ones. Now drag them onto the existing images and they'll replace what's there.
Let's get some branding on this. It's easy to change colors here. I'll replace this with
the name of the gym. So this text is a little dense. There's a lot of it. I can fix this by adding hierarchy. I'll make the headings more obvious and increase the size
of this pullout quote. That is looking better already. Much more enticing to read. And with the bigger headings in quote, people will read them
without even meaning to. On the left side, there are two important
sections for the newsletter: Past Events and Upcoming Events. Past Events show the awesome
stuff you've been up to, creating a little FoMO for the reader. And Upcoming Events, they entice people to engage with the business in the future. On the back, I'm going
to add some extra things to push the engagement opportunities. Here I'll add an obvious call-to-action and double down on it
with a discount voucher. Now they have no reason not to engage.
Coupons work even better
in a digital newsletter. The people on your mailing
list have already expressed interest in your business. They are primed to
engage with your content and want to be in the know. Providing them with exclusive discounts or valuable information is
a great way to build loyalty and even get them talking to others. That can be as simple as
offering a coupon or a QR code. When you're thinking
about newsletter design, use the marketing funnel
to guide your choices. Any good marketing campaign should seek to activate awareness, interest, desire, or decision and action. This is often referred
to as the AIDA model. The print newsletter we've
just talked about is creating awareness and interest on the front page. The call-to-action and coupon
on the second page is trying to force the decision and
help them take action.
Digital newsletters are really
good at the next stages: loyalty and advocacy. That's because people need to
be signed up to receive them. We can make them customers for life and encourage them to share
your brand with others. Okay, let's look at a digital version. Here's one I prepared earlier. The first thing you'll see
is the text is way bigger. It's centered and there's
obvious links and buttons. This is because most emails
are read on smartphones. We call this mobile-first design. It basically means that if you create it to
work perfectly on a phone, it'll work just as well on a desktop. If you design for desktop first, then the text will be too small. People might need to pinch
and zoom in and give up. Trust us, it's a hassle.
To make this button clickable, group the text and the
button graphic together. Then click this Link icon here. Now simply add the web address you want to send your audience to. There, it's done. To share this newsletter,
go to the Share button. Scroll down until you find that
View-only link and hit Copy. This will create a special web address for people to view your design. That's pretty cool, isn't it? It's a super simple way to get your digital
newsletter out quickly.
And since it's been designed for mobile, you might like to send it via
text message or social media instead of email. The options are endless. Speaking of sending it, let's jump back into the
print newsletter for a moment. To print it at home or the office, just download as a PDF under
the share menu like this, or you could get it
professionally printed by Canva. Just hit this button with
the little delivery truck, follow the instructions, and your newsletters
will arrive at your door in no time at all, ready to be hand-delivered
to your audience. That's how easy it is
to create newsletters to communicate with your
customers or community. Thanks for watching. And if you liked it and
want to see more like this, make sure you subscribe to our channel.
There's so much more to talk
about with newsletter design. So if you have any specific questions, let me know in the comments
and I'll get back to you. Keep watching with some
of these suggestions or we'll catch you soon..
