Are you struggling to pull together enough content for your monthly newsletter?

Or not sure where to start?

In this blog, we share how you can curate a compelling email newsletter that will get you consistently good engagement with your database in three phases. You’ll also see an example of how I come up with a newsletter content structure (with photos) at the end.

I use the same technique when bringing together content for my clients, who get consistently high engagement, click rates and responses by applying this simple method.

Phase 1: Combine your existing content

Before you think about creating a bunch of news blogs and video, consider what content you have already.

Here’s a quick list of places to start:

• Previously written blogs and video content
• Team news – do you have a new starter, are you moving office or did you attend a charity event lately?
• Industry reports or newsletters – is there a piece of news that you can share that is relevant?
• News stories you’ve read recently
• Marketing material you’ve previously produced
• Ask your staff – do they have a topic or story they would like to share?

You can see that with a few minutes of planning, you may already have a bunch of content that you could include.

Phase 2: scrape the internet

It’s time to broaden your search.

You can use a number of tools to find articles and content that others are finding useful, alongside Google search.

I’d recommend trying these tools – may be a combination of these – and see what you like:

• Google Alerts / Google News – setting up alerts can give you daily, monthly or weekly round-ups for news content on a topic
• Twitter – to look up what is trending
• Buzzsumo – a place to identify what content is doing well
• Giphy – find GIFS and memes
• Facebook search – use in the same way as Twitter. What posts and content is getting high engagement.

Add all your content ideas into a single content repository, like an Excel spreadsheet or Google doc.

Phase 3: Create your email content structure

Add all your content ideas into a single content repository, like an Excel spreadsheet or Google doc.

I find the most time-effective way to plan out your content is to create a central theme for each month.

For example, you might want to focus on renovations, living rooms and bathrooms for the next three months if you are a builder, while a real estate agent might choose to discuss a type of home, suburb and market update.

Each theme will have a number of sub-topics, that relate to this one.

Example: Residential Builder 3-month email plan

Suppose your speciality is renovations and extensions for high-value projects. You choose a content niche – renovations – and choose three themes.

You can see I have chosen Bathrooms, Living Areas, and Kitchens for February, March and April.

Based on these themes, I’ve split these up into four topics for each newsletter. I suggest keeping some of these the same style to keep a consistency in format, with room to add something different.

I’ve kept a design tip, latest trends article and an inspiring photo for each month, with a different how-to blog also.

Using your content repository, simply populate and design your newsletter layout.

And you’re done! Happy email newsletter-ing.

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