How to use a newsletter for email lead generation: 6 proven techniques

Think email is dead? Think again. While everyone’s busy chasing TikTok trends and throwing money at ads that disappear faster than your morning coffee, email is quietly raking in $40 for every $1 spent. That’s not just ROI—that’s robbery (the legal kind).

Email marketing isn’t just cost-effective—it’s also a great relationship-building and lead-converting machine. But here’s the catch: you’ve got to do it right. So let’s pull back the curtain on email lead generation to see how savvy creatives can turn a simple newsletter into a lead-gen goldmine. Ready to make inboxes your new best friend?

The key to email lead generation is creating personalized newsletter content. That becomes much easier once you’ve understood your audience through comprehensive market and audience research.

If you’ve already worked with several clients in the past, look at the traits of those clients. What were they struggling with? What was their budget? Do they all belong to the same industry or niche? What did they describe as why they chose you over other creatives? These details help you better understand your target audience, allowing you to target potential leads with more relevant content. 

Besides analyzing your current or previous clients, you can look at industry and market reports. These reports should provide more insights into the market. You’ll know what clients are currently interested in, for example. This should help you better position your unique selling points to align with your audience’s needs and expectations. 

Check this out.

This email feels very personal and engaging. It opens by addressing the reader directly by their name. It continues to cover a very relatable topic among creatives, especially freelance creatives, i.e., getting clients. It also adopts a very conversational tone that keeps the readers hooked.

Another secret to successful email lead generation is email list segmentation. Segmenting your list helps you recognize the different types of people within your target audience, allowing you to create unique content that meets their needs. 

The result? More engagement. Higher conversions. This is why even big companies across different industries segment their audiences. For example, Fortune 500 B2B brands segment their customers into SMB and enterprise groups. 

You must do something similar with your list. Analyze your target audience and look for their unique traits. Depending on your needs, you can use different traits to categorize your target audience.

An example of a simple segmentation tactic you can use for your creative services is based on engagement level. Here, you’ll create two or three groups based on how engaged the subscribers are with your newsletter. For example, you could have a group of highly engaged vs. moderately engaged vs. low-engaged subscribers.

Another way to segment your audience is based on how often they want to hear from you. You can easily create these segments by asking subscribers what updates they want to receive. That’s what folks at It’s Nice That do on their signup form. New subscribers can choose between daily, weekly, and Tuesday updates.

You can also segment your list based on the services the subscriber is interested in. For example, if they joined your list through web design templates, place them in a list for website design content. On the other hand, if they joined your list through a graphic design-related lead magnet, you could place them on an email list for graphic design content.

This strategy works well if you have multiple service offerings. You can even have a segment for folks who want to learn their craft and might be interested in your educational products. This is becoming more popular as more creatives use course creator tools to create online courses and supplement their income.

The best part about all this is you don’t have to do it manually. The best email marketing solutions, like GetResponse, can automatically gauge engagement levels or track how users join your email list and place them in relevant email lists. This reduces the manual workload on your end, so you can focus on creating engaging content for every email list segment.

As a creative, you know better than anyone the importance of a catchy visual design. This remains critical even when creating email newsletters. There are two aspects to consider, but let’s start with the technical considerations. 

Make sure your email design is optimized for different devices. About 81% of users open their emails from mobile devices, so you must ensure your email renders correctly when viewed on mobile devices.

The text, images, CTA buttons, and other elements must all be easy to read and engage with on small screens. You may also want to test whether your email looks good on different operating systems. 

In addition to technical considerations, you must also deliver a good user experience. To this end, ensure your email has enough white space around it, and avoid huge blocks of text. Instead, include visual elements like images, videos, or GIFs to keep your newsletters engaging. 

Check out how Knotably, a creative studio from Southern California, has pulled this off:  

The best part is that you can get fully customizable email templates that follow design best practices, so you don’t have to design your newsletters from scratch. For example, Envato offers a wide variety of email templates, including some for creative studios as well as creative personal portfolios. 

Other interactive features you can include to engage newsletter readers include carousels, quizzes, and polls.

Lastly, consider carefully where every crucial element of your email goes. Studies show that humans read content in the “F” pattern. This means you should have some of the more critical elements of your emails placed towards the left. 

Similarly, you should use color combinations carefully. Use contrasting colors for your CTA buttons, and make sure there’s enough white space around them so they can pop and capture user attention. 

Before sending any email, ask yourself whether you would want that email and whether you would find it helpful if it were sent to you. 

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

These questions will help you create quality, timely email content that attracts and keeps users subscribed.

Knowing where your leads are in the customer journey is also important. Use that information to curate the right content for them. For example, you can share insightful tutorials with users trying to solve specific problems independently. For example, imagine a first-time website owner looking to design a basic logo. To provide users with quick reference points, consider using an AI summary generator to create key tutorial takeaways.

Meanwhile, for users who are further along in their buyer journey (someone actively looking for a service provider), you can target them with case studies and portfolio highlights in your newsletters. This is known as lead nurturing. Sharing such valuable and relevant content at the right time brings creative leads closer to working with you. 

It won’t matter much how good your email looks and reads if it doesn’t end with the user taking a desired action. This is where CTAs come into the picture.

You’ll need to consider two things when considering CTAs: placement and design.

For placement, your CTA can be within the email body or at the end. It all depends on how big the email is. For big emails, include multiple CTAs, some within the email body, and one at the end of the email. This makes it easier for users to click the CTA wherever they may be within the email. If it’s a short email, include the CTA at the end of the email.

In terms of design, follow email marketing best practices. Use a contrasting color to ensure the CTA buttons stand out from the rest of the text. As mentioned earlier, ensure the button is surrounded by plenty of white space. 

Let’s look at the email from the creative studio we shared earlier. Notice how the CTA to “JOIN THE SESSION” stands out immediately?

Unfortunately, following industry best practices is not enough. Different audiences react differently, so it’s important to run A/B tests to confirm which CTA design and placement work best for your audience. 

So you can play around with different placements, color designs, and CTA text. But only test one critical element at a time. That makes it easier to pinpoint what changes are moving the needle.

You also want to try different calls to action. For example, you can share time-limited offers or free trials. You can also share free downloadable assets regularly in your newsletters. These offers keep your leads looking forward to and engaging with future newsletters.

Lastly, we should mention the number of CTAs. Do not overwhelm your subscribers with too many calls to action. This can confuse or overwhelm them, and they’ll stop taking action. 

Ideally, your email should have only one CTA. You can sometimes include one or two more, but when you do, make sure the reader knows what the big, important next step is. In other words, make sure the primary CTA stands out over the rest.

Monitor the performance of your newsletters and adjust your strategy accordingly. Track key metrics like:

Top email marketing solutions have analytics dashboards that show all these metrics. Review this dashboard regularly (at least once a month) to track the performance of your campaigns. 

You can even view these campaign metrics alongside data from your profitability analysis. With this approach, you can understand the products and services people read about and actually buy. As a result, you’ll know which products and services you should continue offering and promoting in your emails to ensure successful email campaigns for lead generation and sales.  

Besides monitoring these standard email metrics, we encourage you to conduct A/B tests. These split tests are crucial for enhancing the performance of your campaigns. Use them to test the ideal subject line format, email design, CTA design, etc., to optimize your newsletter’s ROI. 

Finally, most conversions will likely occur on a landing page rather than the email newsletter itself. That means you must also work on optimizing your landing page conversion rate. Make sure the messaging on the email, e.g., the offer, and even the visuals included in the email, are also reflected on the landing page. This consistency will help push leads across the line. 

For optimal results, follow other landing page optimization best practices, like reducing the time to first byte and creating a responsive design.

Several creative agencies are already using newsletters to generate leads. Here are two examples:

The first example is from Knotably, a creative design studio that also runs Knotably Creative House. The creative house helps creatives build profitable businesses and offers premium and free resources like templates and even a masterclass.

The masterclass is one of the lead magnets Knotably uses to build its email list. 

In addition to the masterclass, Knotably also shares valuable content through its newsletter. For example, it offers an email series on the essence of high-value clients.

It also uses offers to engage and convert more creative leads into paying customers, e.g. this special Black Friday discount.

You’ll need a similar newsletter strategy for your creative studio. Start with a simple signup form. You can also use lead magnets to capture more email addresses. Then, use compelling content and special offers to keep leads engaged and convert them into paying clients.

A key step in email lead generation is the opt-in-form. How do you entice people to enter those all-important details? Check out how Wolf Craft does it with this subtle yet compelling popup:

It tells you exactly what you’re signing up for, and the customer testimonials on the left make it seem like something you won’t want to miss out on. And the photo of the agency founders gives it that personal touch.

And if you click away from the popup, there’s also this signup form on the agency’s dedicated newsletter landing page. Again, it pitches the newsletter’s key selling points, with more social proof through the customer quote and the wording of the CTA: “Join 5000+ creative business owners….”

This is a great example of email lead generation through compelling copy. No incentives, no giveaways—just a clear, persuasive, well-written and well-designed pitch.

As you’d expect from an agency that specializes in content marketing, Animalz nails its email newsletter. The key here is simplicity—the design of the email newsletter’s signup form perfectly reflects the brand promise: “All insight, no fluff.”

The emails themselves follow a similar approach: a simple, clear design, with the insights front and center. As other brands opt for complicated designs full of images and video, the Animalz newsletter simply delivers good content that’s easy to read.

Want to see more examples of successful email marketing? Check out our list of the best marketing newsletters for creatives.

Email is an incredibly profitable marketing channel. AI and automation have also made it even easier to use. So, if you want to take your creative career to the next level, use newsletters for better email lead generation and for nurturing long-term relationships with your clients. 

Personalize your emails, use email segmentation, and optimize your email design. You must also create valuable content, include clear CTAs, and monitor your campaign performance closely. Follow this guide, and you should see your sales funnel grow with qualified leads. 

Stay on top of the best practices by checking out our list of email marketing trends for 2025 and learning how to use a quiz funnel for lead generation.