How Email Marketing Can Improve Content Promotion

Every marketing professional is aware of the importance of inbound marketing. Content shared through inbound marketing campaigns allows you to create an ongoing dialogue with the audience and build better relationships with them. When we think of inbound marketing campaigns, the first thing that comes to mind is content marketing. Content marketing helps in driving organic traffic to your website, and it also plays a crucial role in building trust with your audience. But your inbound marketing efforts also need outbound promotions.

There are multiple opportunities today when it comes to promoting the content you create. There are social media platforms, communities, and other distribution channels. But nothing beats good old email marketing when it comes to ROI. According to stats, every $1 invested in email marketing brings you a return of $36. This is the highest among all other marketing channels and has been so for the past decade. In fact, email is so effective, a new survey reports that 44% of small businesses email their subscriber list at least weekly.

Even with the booming popularity of social media marketing these days, email marketing continues to be a very effective channel for content promotion. The benefits of email marketing are many –

• Shows greater ROI (evidently!)
• Helps in reeling in new customers.
• More cost-effective.
• Allows you to create targeted messages.
• Can be easily integrated with other marketing channels.
• Makes it easier for the higher-intent customers to engage with your business.

Given its ability to reach a larger proportion of users, email marketing can be an indispensable tool to build a community around your business. When you weave your email marketing and content marketing strategies together, you can show your audience what sets you apart from the competition.

How to create an effective email marketing campaign to promote content?

1. Build your mailing list

To maximize the impact of your email marketing campaign, it is important to ensure that you are sending the emails to the right people. For this, you need to build your email list.

For growing your mailing list, several methods can be employed –

• Website Sign-Up: Your website visitors usually create an account to use your services or products. You can ask the visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter for tips, white paper, and other valuable resources when they sign up.
• In-Store Sign-up Sheet: If you own a brick-and-mortar business, you can provide your customers with an in-store sign-up sheet where they can jot down their email addresses.
• Social Media Sign-Up: You can also drive sign-ups through your social media pages. For this, all you have to do is share links with a sign-up button for your email newsletter.
• Gated content: Another good way to collect your target audience’s emails is by publishing high-quality, valuable gated content on your blog or website. This could be e-books, research reports, whitepapers or anything that a visitor would want to download, and would happily share their email addresses for it.
• Interactive content: Interactive content like quizzes, surveys, etc. are a good way to gather email addresses too. You can let your visitors take the quiz/survey and share the results only through email. This generates curiosity in them, and they would willingly give you their contact info in exchange for insights.

2. Segment your mailing lists

Segmenting your email lists is important to ensure that you send relevant content to the right people. You can do this by creating smart segments of your subscriber base, based on their location, gender, age, and so on. You can break up your audience base even further, by separating them on the basis of their online behavior and interests.

Segmenting your mailing lists will allow you to create personalized content that will resonate with your audience.

3. Decide on an appealing and engaging design for your email newsletters

Even if your newsletters are filled with insightful and valuable content, they need to look good if you want them to have an impact on the readers. You can find some beautifully-designed email templates on HubSpot and MailChimp.

If you plan on building one from scratch, here are some tips on incorporating an engaging and appealing design for your email newsletter –

• Use branding: You need the newsletter to be aligned with your company’s visual identity. Make sure to use your brand colors and fonts, besides adding the brand logo.
• White space: Make adequate use of blank areas or white space around the visual objects and text. This improves the readability of the newsletter and makes it look more professional and clean.
• Images: Make your newsletter more eye-catching by adding colored header images and GIFs.
• Mobile-friendly: Ensure that your newsletter is both desktop and mobile-friendly.

4. Plan what content goes into your newsletters

This step is possibly the most important part of your email marketing strategy. Your email newsletter subscribers signed up to get targeted information about your brand. Most people lead busy lives, so it is important that your content is relevant to them. In email marketing campaigns, you will have a small window of opportunity to prove that your content is worthwhile to the readers. Make sure that you choose the right content for the right audience, with a message that grabs their attention straight away. Choose content like seasonal articles, tips and tricks, blog promotions, and theme-based pieces, which will encourage the readers to connect with your brand.

5. Build a content workflow, track and manage the effort

The next step is to build a sustainable and repeatable content creation and publishing workflow. Having a single place where you can collaborate with your team, and keep a repository of all past work and newsletters makes the whole process a lot more streamlined. It is best to create a template for your email newsletters so you have a consistent format that resonates with your audience. Templates also help ensure that the content fits in perfectly with your newsletter design.

I use Narrato as my content planning tool , for creating newsletter content and managing the effort effectively with my team. Narrato comes with a custom template feature that I have used to structure our newsletter for consistency. I also use other Narrato features like calendars, AI writing and readability assistant, topic generator and collaboration through comments and messaging. This helps us keep our newsletter effort organized and I am able to access all past newsletter content in one place.

For images and graphics, I use Narrato’s Free Image Search Tool and Canva.

6. Experiment with your email’s subject lines and headlines

The biggest hurdle faced in email marketing campaigns is getting your readers to open the email. Usually, you will only have a few seconds to grab the attention of the reader. A good subject line or headline is key to increasing the open rate of your email marketing campaign.

7. Add clickable links and CTAs to direct readers to your blog or website

Once you have planned the content for your email marketing campaign, the next task is to create compelling newsletters that can drive leads. If you do not have an in-house content writing team, you can use a content marketplace to avail the services of hundreds of expert freelance content writers.

If you are managing it in-house though, make sure you include clickable links that direct your subscribers to your website/blog. If you are planning to promote any product/service in your newsletter, you should also add a call to action (CTA). Be strategic with the placement of links and CTA, and make sure that they are easily identifiable.

8. Add social sharing buttons to encourage readers to share your newsletter stories

To derive greater value from your email campaign, it needs to be shareable so that it can reach more people. You can ask your subscribers to share the newsletter content on their social media pages. To make this easier include social sharing buttons in the email.

9. Have a fixed schedule for sending out your newsletters

To drive a successful email marketing campaign, it is important to stick to a schedule. You need to plan how often you want to send out your newsletters. Once planned, you can use email marketing software to schedule and send out your newsletters. It would be a good idea to inform your audience in advance so that they know when they can expect to read your newsletters. Once you have a fixed schedule, try to be consistent with your efforts as it helps in building trust with the audience. Before hitting the “Send” button, however, you should also ensure email security and authentication. Do a quick DKIM check to make sure the messages you send will go from your domain’s name.

Leverage Email Marketing to Maximize Content Promotion

Putting all your eggs in one basket can prove to be a costly mistake when it comes to marketing your content. As the marketing landscape continues to change, you need to make sure that you are diversifying your investments in terms of money, effort, and time. Integrating email marketing into your content promotion strategies will allow you to leverage the power of both channels. It will also open a world of opportunities to scale your business to new heights.