Once you’ve put time and money into creating great content, you need to drive traffic to it by testing out a variety of distribution channels, including social media, SEO, and ad networks.
All of them can direct some traffic to your site, but if you want to get guaranteed, consistent traffic, focus your efforts on email. While social media and SEO have their benefits, email newsletters provide the most value because email delivers the highest click-through rate, and it’s the channel that converts the most people.
In fact, 93% of B2B marketers reported using email to distribute their content in CMI/ MarketingProf’s B2B Content Marketing: 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America research.
But, more importantly, 93% of those who use email consider it to be an important channel for their content marketing success.
It’s clear that solid email strategies underpin successful content marketing efforts, but you can’t just send a weekly newsletter to your entire list and expect great results. Marketers need to create email that subscribers want to open.
Segment your list for increased relevance
You create content with a particular persona in mind, and you should do the same when drafting an email. It takes little effort to allow new subscribers to select their email preferences during their initial sign-up, but these few seconds can pay huge dividends during content delivery.
As you onboard subscribers, ask them questions like:
- How often would you like to receive emails from us? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?
- What particular topics are you interested in?
- What kinds of content interest you the most? Text? Video? Infographics?
These people might be engaging with your brand for the first time so don’t overwhelm them with too many questions. But asking a few targeted questions can help you deliver an email experience that’s resonant as well as relevant.
Providing an email message that resonates with a subscriber increases the likelihood that the recipient will do something with that content such as sharing it or taking another specific action.
Think outside the newsletter
It’s time to embrace behavior-based automation triggers with your email distribution.
Epsilon reports that automated emails get 152% higher click rates than broadcast emails and, when done right, these emails can create a more personal relationship with your subscribers.
Automation triggers should be based on your personalized buyer behaviors, but common choices include:
- Welcome emails when new users join your service, start a trial, or create an account
- Abandoned cart or incomplete account notifications
- Anniversary emails to mark their time as a subscriber, customer, or both
- Engagement-driven emails based on what a subscriber previously clicked on
If you take steps to collect some basic email preference data during the sign-up process, you can also use that to drive email automations.
Focus on list quality over quantity
Let’s all pause for a moment and take a deep breath, because this section is going to be a little bit painful.
We’re going to talk about removing subscribers from your email list.
On purpose.
When you struggle to build your audience on your own land by growing an email list, deliberately deleting subscribers can seem like the height of poor decision-making.
But, if not every subscriber is a member of your target audience it stands to reason that not every subscriber is good for your brand. After all, an unengaged email subscriber is unlikely to ever turn into a high-quality sales lead.
This means that you need to set up a workflow that reaches out to subscribers who simply aren’t that into you and offer a graceful exit from their inboxes.
Emails can be one of your most useful marketing tools helping to raise awareness or even develop a closer relationship with your members or clients and are an essential part of modern life. With the sea of messages being pushed to people’s screens, try out these tips to make your emails stand out, rather than become destined for the trash folder.
MVP
Megan Van Petten
CEO & President
Van Petten Group, Inc.