The promise of content marketing is that it is a non-spammy way to attract visitors to a website. Done well, demonstrating knowledge and expertise in a way that your prospect will find helpful, you will leave them asking for more.
However, if it stops with your website, you may have drawn more visitors, but you’re unlikely to convert them to sales ready conversations. To take a good content marketing program to a great content marketing program takes a few well-placed email marketing tips.
1. Buyer Focused: “I care because…?”
It’s critical to be clear in your communication how your buyer will benefit. If they can easily answer “What’s in it for me”, then you have a chance. If they can’t see how they will benefit by opening your email or reading your content, then they won’t.
Before you start working on your program, ask yourself the following questions:
- What do I want my buyer to think?
- Why should they, what tangible information supports this?
- What is the ONE thing my buyer should take away?
2. On Demand: Work on their timing, not yours
Let’s say a prospective buyer downloads a guide about new technology trends in your industry. In the old days you’d add them to your quarterly newsletter list and have the sales team try to connect to schedule a demo.
A better approach is to setup an automatic follow up email series based on their demonstrated interest while it’s still fresh in their minds. Show them how they can learn more about the advantages of technology with an offer to download a more detailed eBook about leveraging new technology to improve profitability.
Since the buyer is still in early stage research, showing them how they do something better will pull them closer, while going for a premature close could just drive them away.
3. Contextual Messaging: Start on topic and in context
Your buyer has connected with your company because of something that interested them. Whether it was an article on your blog, an eBook, or even something in social. It wasn’t the channel, but the content they found in that channel.
What was the topic that piqued their interest? Use that as the entry for your email to connect and continue the conversation.
An Example of Putting These Email Marketing Tips in Action.
After downloading one of the available whitepapers the follow up connected first about the content the buyer had downloaded, then introduced a case study offer. Even better, the case study was perfectly matched with the questions the buyer had answered about their primary challenges.
4. Responsive Design: Be prepared for no matter the device
People are talking about the importance of mobile friendly websites. However mobile friendly email may be even more important.
In a study released by Knotice and reported on MarketingProfs, depending on industry, as much as 55% of all marketing email is now being opened on a mobile devise. We now have access to recipients at a wide variety of times. The problem is mobile click through rates are significantly lower than desktop. According to the Knotice report, the drop was as much as 50% lower click through for mobile opens. A big part of the problem is emails being sent that aren’t mobile friendly.
A Few Things to Keep in Mind About Email for Mobile
- Simplicity: Smaller screen means you have less space for long messages. Keep your emails short to make them easier to read on the small screen.
- Clear calls to action: Take out the guess work by making it easy for the reader to know what to do next
- Go easy on font sizes: Not everyone has telescopic vision. Small screens make it that more difficult.
5. Smart Personalization: Make it an actual conversation
Virtually every email program allows personalization on more than just a Hello <Name Here> level. However most marketers aren’t using personalization anywhere near it’s potential.
In a test conducted by HubSpot, personalizing an email based on name saw an increase in click through by around 20% (from 5.8% to 7%). Even more impressive, personalizing with the recipient’s company name improved click through by nearly double. (7.5% to 15%)
So where else can you leverage personalization. Think about:
- Subject line – on name or company when relevant
- Email from line (make the it appear to be from their account manager)
- In a headline, or directly within the “ask” because of your support in <year here> we were able to…
Where shouldn’t you use personalization? Anywhere it feels unnatural, or with any data that doesn’t add to the conversation and enhance the connection.
So are you ready to make your content marketing shine? Be sure to build in a few of these email marketing tips into your communication follow-ups.
