Maximize ROI by Combining Content and Email Marketing

• Updated on: 2019-01-29
• Read original article here

Maximize ROI by Combining Content and Email Marketing
CAMPAIGN MONITOR - JAN 25, 2019
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This is a guest post from Applozic.
If you ask marketers which digital marketing channels consistently perform, you’ll probably hear content and email marketing the most often. Content and email marketing have been around for a while now and, in fact, you may have even heard people say content and email marketing are dead.
Well, this is far from reality.
Email and content marketing not only remain relevant but deliver some of the best ROI available. Email marketing has an ROI of approximately 4000% . On the other hand, B2C companies who have an active blog generate 88% more leads than the companies without active blogs .
Not so long ago, bulk emailing and generic content used to be a killer strategy. But gone are the days of mass marketing. Now, delivering results boils down to how well you can segment and personalize marketing for your target niche.
Independently, both of these channels have worked wonders for businesses, agencies, and bloggers alike. However, you can combine these two channels and use them together to get even better results.
In this post, we shall discuss the ways content and email marketing can amplify your returns when used in tandem.
The basic need: Great content
Almost everyone tries their hand at creating content. And, a good number of companies create good content.
However, very few companies create great content that’s worthy of revisiting time and time again. In fact, I can count the name of blogs and publications I regularly visit on one hand. The gap between mediocre and good content is much smaller than the gap between good and great content.
The first step to succeeding in the highly competitive content space is to produce great content, be it articles, infographics, podcasts, videos, white-papers, e-books, case studies, etc. Your content has to stand out if it’s going to deliver returns.
These are the important aspects of creating phenomenal content which I have used time and again to get the best results:
First things first, create content which you yourself would love to read/view/share and generally engage with.
People read to gain knowledge, not to buy a product. Hence, the content should provide value in addition to product knowledge.
Do thorough research when choosing a topic. You need to answer questions such as, “What benefits will the readers get? How relevant is this topic to my value proposition? Is it shareworthy?”
Storytelling has become immensely important to the success of digital content. Weave the content into a story which relates to your brand. An even better option is to relate the story to your users in order to make them feel more connected to your narrative.
Craft actionable, educational, and highly targeted content. If you are a street-style online store, create content which appeals to the relevant audience such as young-adults, fashion bloggers, and micro-influencers.
Creating great content is hard. But unless you already have a bandwagon of hundreds of thousands of readers, it’s difficult to get enough people to read your content to drive the kind of revenue you want.
This is where content distribution kicks in.
Deliver the content to people who are already aware of your brand, including your customers, signups, subscribers, and social media audience, in order to get your content seen.
As a general rule of thumb, you should spend at least the same amount of time distributing your content as you did creating it.
And one of the most effective ways to distribute your content is through email.
Great content and effective email marketing for the win
There are a plethora of ways to deliver content through emails, but the two most effective are newsletters and behavior-based emails.
Which of these two strategies will work best for you depends largely on your industry, what you want to accomplish, and what actions you want your users to take.
Content delivered through newsletters
Newsletters have been around for a while now. Businesses and bloggers alike use newsletters to engage, educate, and retain their audience. Even after all these years, newsletters remain effective.
The most common example of newsletters that deliver content is the content round-up.
Most companies collate their best content for the week or month and send these links to their audience:
There are a few disadvantages associated with these newsletters you need to watch out for when crafting your content round-up newsletter:
Too many CTAs (calls-to-action) in the email can divide the reader’s attention if not executed well.
If you don’t take the time to develop specific and intriguing subject lines you might see lower open rates.
To combat these points, some businesses have started post-based newsletters where the entire newsletter is dedicated to a single content piece. You can customize your subject lines to get better open rates and keep the whole email focused on one single CTA.
Check out at the below newsletter for a podcast:
Image Source: Really Good Emails
Don’t forget to segment
Sending a single newsletter to all your subscribers may not be the best strategy today since most people expect you to send them only the content they find relevant. Proper segmentation can mean better optimization, leading to more revenue down the line.
Based on the information you’ve gathered from your audience, you can segment them in order to shoot out more relevant newsletters. This information can be based on certain aspects such as location, gender, interests, or past purchases. According to stats, segmented email campaigns tend to generate 58% of all the revenue.
Also, to make sure your email campaign gets the maximum amount of exposure, be sure every email newsletter has an easy option to share on social media or with your reader’s network. According to a study, email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources .
Content delivered through behavioral marketing
As our field sees more and more sophisticated email marketing tools, behavior or trigger-based email marketing is on the rise.
In order to send behavior-based emails, you analyze your users’ website usage, purchase patterns, email engagement, social media engagement, and other behaviors and then trigger highly contextual emails. Emails that react to the behaviors performed by your audience allow you to show your visitor that you value them and you’re listening to them.
But how can content marketing fit into behavioral emails? The answer is practically everywhere.
For instance, if a person searches for bridalwear on your online store, you can email her a blog or an infographic about how to choose the perfect wedding dress and accessories.
You can also segment your list based on how users have interacted with your previous email campaigns. The engagement analytics will tell you how different users engage with specific content. This will help you deliver the most effective content straight to your subscriber’s inbox.
Your educational videos and knowledge-based articles can be delivered to your users based on the activity they have performed on your website. A chat SDK provider company increased their reply rates by 87% using this strategy.
When someone performs a set of activities on your website, you can nudge them along your sales funnel by sharing educational content revolving around your products and services.
Check out the email below that does exactly this:
Image Source: Really Good Emails
Wrap up
When it comes to content marketing, distributing content should be just as important to your strategy as creating content. Brands, agencies, and bloggers alike should leverage their audience to maximize the visibility of the content they produce.
Email marketing provides one of the most effective channels to distribute your content.
You can leverage multiple strategies to distribute your content through email. Consider newsletters, whether date-based or post-based, as well as behavioral emails to increase the number of people who engage with your content.
Content and email marketing undoubtedly remain two of the best marketing channels your business can leverage, and effective coordination of both can give you better ROI on your efforts.
Parth has an in-depth understanding of all things inbound marketing. Currently leading inbound marketing at Applozic and Kommunicate , Parth has a knack for developing and executing sustainable marketing strategies. Whenever he’s not marketing a product, you can find him writing microfiction, reading books or playing football.
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This blog provides general information and discussion about email marketing and related subjects. The content provided in this blog ("Content”), should not be construed as and is not intended to constitute financial, legal or tax advice. You should seek the advice of professionals prior to acting upon any information contained in the Content. All Content is provided strictly “as is” and we make no warranty or representation of any kind regarding the Content.
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In 2004, a study at Carnegie Mellon revealed that an image of one person vs. an abstract idea made people feel more charitable. This concept, explored further in the marketing best-seller Made to Stick, can also be applied to event promotion. The Global Fund for Women, a non-profit foundation funding human rights initiatives, does a great job of this with their Grassroots Movement for Justice event. The most prominent element in this email is a picture of a woman. She’s working in a field somewhere else in the globe. She seems happy. In the following copy, this marketer drives the point home of how this woman is related to all women in the movement against climate change. BuzzSumo: Channeling the Power of Stats Most event marketers (40%) believe email marketing is the most effective channel for promoting an event (source). Sixty-two percent of marketers who use email marketing to promote their events use event management software (source). You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet (source). Stats are compelling. They provide neatly wrapped up statements that help us better understand something. They can provide us with the evidence we need to affirm or disprove our beliefs. Presented in the right way, they can even move us to make big decisions. Like signing up for an event. The team at BuzzSumo gets this. BuzzSumo, after all, is a platform predicated on sorting through massive piles of web data in order to provide their users with valuable, pertinent information. In one promotional email for an upcoming workshop, the marketers behind BuzzSumo placed a bold enticing stat front and center. What’s more, this stat clearly communicates the potential value that attendees stand to gain from the event. Livefront: Keeping it Simple There’s a reason that A, B, C is easy as 1, 2, 3. Research shows that list-style content has this sort of quasi-magical effect on readers that makes them feel good. List-style content also makes marketers feel good because it’s just so freaking effective at driving click-through rate, among other metrics. In this email promoting an augmented reality and demo open house, the mobile app and design company Livefront uses a list to great effect. In a 1, 2, 3 flourish, Livefront proposes a convincing argument for why a contact should attend their event. And it all revolves around bubbles. Ad Age: Sounding Out Color The blank page. It’s the scourge of any writer and the eternal companion of those in the 21st century who spend countless hours in email clients. When something pops through that client that contrasts greatly with the typical blankness, it stands out. For their Ad Age Next event, the eponymous publisher leverages the power of color to create an eminently readable email. The layout of the email is broken down into different sections, each of which features different value props of the event, each of which come in a variety of loud colors. SoHo House: Going Big on Images Pictures aren’t just worth a thousand words, they are also linked to better marketing performance. People are more likely to share images over standard text that they find on the internet. Soho House is less of a house and more of a network of houses. It’s a private, members-only club for those in creative industries. For the opening of one of their houses in New York City, they decided to go all-in on an image. This might seem to be breaking some email design principles—there’s not a clear CTA and there’s very little contextual info. But the image is so vibrant and arranged that it begs to be cursored over and clicked by readers. Optimizely: Showing off Access Whether you have a celebrity, industry thought leader, exclusive offers or discounts—your event has something to offer attendees that they wouldn’t normally be able to find. As Cari Goodrich, Senior Director of Global Marketing Programs at Looker, puts it: “The three pillars of a successful event are people, places, and things that prospects usually don’t have access to.” In some cases, you may be giving your attendees access to watching the most decorated US Swimmer in history give a keynote speech. At least, that was the case at Optimizely’s Opticon Conference. Knowing that they had a big name on their hands, the team at Optimizely featured Michael Phelps in some of their promotional emails. SXSW: Highlighting the Possibilities At its best, a festival is a choose-your-own-adventure kind of experience. There are a variety of sessions, speakers, activities and food items. It’s up to the attendee to decide what they experience and when. The marketing team at South by Southwest (SXSW) lays out the value of attendee choice clearly in this promotional email. SXSW lays out different adventures that an attendee can happen on at their event. Whether you’re more interested in film, music or tech, there’s something for you at SXSW. Wrap up We’ve looked at a variety of different emails from different industries. We’ve seen examples of colorful design, data-driven copy and dead-simple messaging. When crafting the email promotion strategy for your next event, keep the following in mind: Countdown timers and time-sensitive copy are an effective way of creating urgency. When trying to convince a reader to convince their boss, consider illustrating the cost behind your conference. Draw a connection to what readers will have access to at an event, be that people, knowledge, or the chance to make a difference. Organize the value props of your event in simple ordered lists to drive home the value of your event. Or, consider a bold image-centric design.
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