Small Business Newsletter Ideas: What to Send and How Often

A good small business newsletter is one short, useful email, sent on a schedule you can actually keep. For most owners that means once a month, with one main thing to say and one thing to do next. Send customers what they'd want to know anyway: what's new, what's coming up, and something helpful about your work.

How often should you send it?

There's no proven right answer, so choose the most frequent schedule you won't abandon.

Mailchimp, which sells email marketing software, notes that many companies send monthly but doesn't set a rule. One of its partners, consultant Vicky Glass, suggests weekly as a good target and monthly as the minimum, and above all a frequency you can stick to. She also gives a useful warning sign: if you send more often and people start unsubscribing, you've probably gone too far.

Our suggestion for a busy owner is to start monthly. It's enough to stay familiar and rarely enough that you'll have real news. Move to every two weeks if you often run out of room, say with a shop with new stock all the time or a studio with a changing class schedule.

Pick a day, like the first Tuesday of the month, and put it in your calendar.

What should a good newsletter contain?

Keep the same simple shape each time, so it gets quicker to write:

1. A subject line that says what's inside. "Spring class times, and a new teacher" beats "March newsletter".
2. A short opening line in your own voice. One or two sentences is plenty.
3. One main item. Your news, offer or tip, with a photo if you have a good one.
4. One or two small items, such as dates, opening hours or something new.
5. One clear next step. Book, call, reply, or come in. If you ask for five things, people tend to do none.
6. The footer the law requires: your postal address and an unsubscribe link. More on that below.

Most people will read it on a phone, so keep paragraphs short and the button easy to tap. Mailchimp's test is that content should be timely, relevant and of real value to the reader.

15 newsletter ideas for a small business

When you can't think of a topic, take one from this list. Each one is meant to be adapted to your own trade.

News from the business

• A new product, service or team member, and why you added it
• Changes to hours, prices or booking, with the reason
• What's coming next season, so people can plan
• A behind-the-scenes look at something customers never see

Useful to the reader

• The question customers ask you most, answered properly
• A mistake you see people make, and how to avoid it
• How to look after what they bought from you
• A short seasonal checklist: getting a boiler ready for winter, or a garden for spring
• How to choose between two of your options

Reasons to come in or book

• Your own real offer, with clear terms
• An event, class or workshop, with the date and how to sign up
• Early access for subscribers: new stock or first choice of appointments
• A reminder that it's time to book, for anything with a season or a repeat cycle

People and place

• A customer's story, with their permission
• Another local business you admire, and why

For a bigger theme to build a month around, our list of small business marketing ideas may help. If you write articles for your website, a newsletter is a good place to share them too.

Getting people on the list

A small list of people who asked to hear from you is worth more than a large one that didn't. Mailchimp says plainly that you can't just start sending newsletters to people who didn't ask for them, and its terms prohibit bought or scraped lists.

Some simple ways to ask:

• A sign-up form on your website, asking for little more than an email address
• A QR code at the till or on the table
• A question at booking: "Would you like our monthly email?"

Tell people what they'll get and how often. "One email a month with new classes and the odd offer" is an easy thing to say yes to.

The US rules: CAN-SPAM basics

If you send marketing email in the US, the CAN-SPAM Act applies. It's not limited to bulk mail. The FTC, the US agency that enforces it, says it covers all commercial messages, with no exception for business-to-business email. This is a plain summary of the FTC's guide, not legal advice. Here's what the guide asks of you:

• Honest sender details. Your "From" name and routing information must identify who sent it.
• An honest subject line. It must reflect what's in the email.
• Say it's an ad, if it is. The message must clearly disclose that it's an advertisement, though the FTC says you have a lot of leeway in how.
• Your physical postal address. A street address, a registered post office box, or a registered private mailbox all count.
• A clear way to opt out. Tell people how to stop your marketing email, in words that are easy to find.
• Honor opt-outs fast. You have 10 business days. The opt-out must keep working for at least 30 days after you send. You can't charge a fee or ask for anything beyond an email address.
• Stay responsible. If someone else sends your email, you can still be held responsible.

The penalties are real: the FTC says each email in violation can cost up to $53,088.

Purely transactional messages, such as a receipt or a booking confirmation, are mostly exempt. When an email mixes the two, what matters is its primary purpose, and the FTC says it reads the exempt categories narrowly. So don't count on a sales pitch tucked into a receipt being exempt.

The good news is that most email tools build the unsubscribe link and address footer into their templates. Check they're on before you send. If you have subscribers outside the US, other countries have their own rules, and they can be stricter.

How to tell if it's working

Your email tool will show you a few numbers.

• Open rate: the share of people who opened it. Treat this as a rough guide. Mailchimp says it isn't fully accurate, and Apple's privacy features and bots can inflate it.
• Click rate: the share who clicked something, which says more about real interest.
• Unsubscribes: a few each time is normal. A jump tells you something changed.

For a rough yardstick, Mailchimp's own customers averaged a 35.63% open rate, a 2.62% click rate and 0.22% unsubscribes, on figures last updated in December 2023 and only for lists of 1,000 or more. Your small list may look quite different, and that's fine. Compare each email with your last few instead.

The numbers that matter most are the ones in your own business. Did anyone book, reply, or mention the email when they came in? If you're still working out where a newsletter fits among everything else, try the 30-minute marketing plan.

Other ways to get it written

• Write it yourself in 30 minutes. Keep a note on your phone during the month and add anything customers ask or anything that changes. The note becomes the newsletter.
• Ask a team member who likes writing to draft it, and read it before it goes.
• Use software that drafts it. We make IndieAM, which plans a month of marketing and writes newsletters in your business's voice, along with social posts and articles. You approve each one, then send the newsletter yourself from your own email tool, since it's written for you but posted by hand. It doesn't suit you if you want your list, sign-up forms and sending all taken care of. Our prices are on the home page.

Whichever you choose, start with one email. Write it to one customer you like, send it on the day you promised, and see who replies.