How To Add Your Blog Post To Your Email Campaign
Blogging is a very effective way to get potential customers to your website. Research has shown that regular publishing of content on your company blog can improve lead generation and revenue. However, many website owners rely on social media and SEO in order to generate traffic for blogs.
These aren’t the only two ways.
You can utilise your mailing list to bring in audiences to read your content. There are two reasons why this isn’t currently done.
The first is because blog writers generally discount blogs as a way to bring in people unfamiliar with the brand to introduce them and then convince them to subscribe to the mailing list. The second reason is that business owners often see email as a way to sell with audiences and to do little else.
The Number Of Touchpoints In A Sale
The problem with these two assumptions is that it ignores a fundamental rule about selling. That in 80% of cases, it takes between five and twelve interactions to make one sale. That is a lot of touchpoints to cover. Yet sending an email and reading a blog would actually count as two.
It also ignores the potential of blog posts to sell to customers. After all, if you’re using blogging to generate leads, you’ve already used them to sell to your audience.
Therefore, email marketing and blogging should be combined. But how can you do that? Here are some simple solutions that can help you integrate the two.
1. Blog Summary Email
Either by using an RSS feed, or by creating a manual summary, you can send audiences a list of recent blog posts. Within the email, contain a blog title, blog excerpt and a featured image for each blog post. Then create a link to each individual blog post.
This allows your audience to select which blogs they’re interested in and read those in full on your website. This is a simple way to build blog traffic, but you can sometimes find that busy individuals give your RSS feeds a low priority.
At the same time, if you don’t publish a lot of content, like two or three a week, then this methodology doesn’t really work. However, if you publish numerous articles per week, this is a great option for your brand.
2. Summary Within Other Emails
A common tactic is to include a ‘blog post plug’. This is like having a general email with a section of it dedicated to promoting your latest blog post. This is a simple and sometimes effective way to get people to read your content; but it comes with a couple of problems.
The first is that it makes your emails more cluttered. The second is that it can devalue your main message and people forget your messages as they read your content. Therefore, you might lose revenue for extra traffic.
3. Dedicated Emails
This is a common tactic where a blog post has its own email sent out. In the email you can sell what the blog post is about, why it is important to read and other critical information that the audience needs to know. A lot of companies use this tactic and some to great effect. But you’ve got to make sure that you’re publishing high quality articles that aren’t going to be duplicate content from other sources.
If you don’t have a lot of blog posts being published then this is the best option for you. It can also add a little personality to your marketing and get people to like your content more.
Conclusion
Email marketing and blogging should be connected more. By using different methods, you can market your blog to your subscribers, bring them back to your brand and sell them your value proposition. However, you must select the right strategy for your brand. This is based on your end-goals and the level of blogging you do.
Do you blog? How many blogs do you write per month?
Let us know in the comments below.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: blog writing, blogging, email marketing
Making Email, Social And Content Marketing Work Together
Social media, content marketing and email marketing should support each other for you to get the best results.
Digital marketing is about attracting, convincing, and selling to customers. There are many ways to do this, but one thing has been clear for a number of years: that it takes more than one or two interactions to sell to the majority of customers.
In fact, research has shown that 80% of transactions are not made until the 5th and 12th interaction with a brand. This can be hard to achieve on one channel, which is why you need as many channels as possible, working together to create a sales funnel that creates those necessary interaction points as quickly as possible.
Why Use Multiple Platforms To Market Your Product
There are many who believe that one sales channel is their only way to achieve sales. However, this is a flawed system. If you used emails exclusively, you might need to send 12 emails to get them to buy. If you send one email per week, that’s 12 weeks to generate the sale, a long time, and that could mean you lose out to a competitor.
However, if you use a mix of platforms, you might catch the eye of the consumer at several points of the day. For instance, when they check in on Facebook and see some of your content (organically or paid) they are making an interaction.
When they are doing some research, with good SEO work, they might see some of your content on the subject and then read it: another interaction point. Therefore, when you next send an email, your potential customer isn’t just on interaction point one, they are on interaction point three or four.
However, if you don’t have these marketing channels aligned, you might be doing more harm than good to your marketing. Instead, you need to find a way to combine them into one campaign that’s mutually beneficial.
How To Combine Platforms Into A Single Campaign
The first step to combining platforms into a single campaign is to ensure that each platform is connected to the others. You don’t want each platform to just connect to another, you want to include as many platforms as you can from the other platforms.
So for instance, on a piece of web content, whether it’s a landing page, downloadable content, or blog post, you need to connect it to your social media accounts and mailing list. On your emails, you should direct them to a landing page and also social media profiles.
The challenge is on social media. Here, each piece of content should refer to just one link, e.g. a mailing list, or web content. But generally, with your social media campaigns, you should refer to all your other platforms equally.
You’ll then need to find a way to direct audiences to the next platform. This can be done with a good call-to-action. A good call-to-action should include:
• Urgency
• Definition of the action you want them to do.
• Time delay.
• An interesting offer and/or promise.
Finally, you need to consider how each piece of content is connected to the next. You want to take the customer on a journey where each interaction is another step in a single journey. So, if you sent an email about cooking a holiday meal, you could have call-to-action about the desserts or games for the festive meal. As long as it’s relevant and adds value for your customer, then you’ve got some good content. Here you have at least two interaction points.
Another good example of this would be offering people tips on social media about cooking, and linking that to a landing page where they can subscribe to a mailing list for ingredients, cooking instructions, etc. This scenario has at least three interaction points.
Therefore, by connecting marketing on all channels, you can cut down the time to sell from up to 12 weeks to under three weeks.
Conclusion
Selling online can often mean that you have as many as 12 interactions before your customer makes a purchase. This can take a long time if you only use one platform to sell. Instead, you need to combine social media, web content and email marketing campaigns to minimise the time it takes to sell to your customers.
Do you combine your marketing platforms? How do you ensure they are aligned?
Let us know in the comments below.
Read post Post a Comment. Tagged in: blogging, email marketing, marketing strategy, Social Media
How To Combine Blogging With Email Marketing For Best-Selling Results
Why email marketing and blogging should be combined!
Email marketing isn’t the only digital marketing channel that you should pursue. There are numerous different channels that can help sell your products and services and the effectiveness of these channels can be increased if they are combined.
One of the most effective marketing channels to combine with your email marketing campaigns is blogging. This marketing platform has a reputation to generate a lot of interest in your brand. Some of the most important statistics for blogging include:
- Brands that prioritise blogging as a marketing channel are 13 times more likely to see a positive return on their investment.
- Brands that blog generate 67% more quality leads.
- The cost of blogging is limited to your time.
- Companies who blog receive nearly double the amount of links back to their website.
- Blogs are the fifth most trusted source of information online. (Source Hubspot)
With email marketing being one of the best ways to sell, combining the two can be a way to generate leads, instil trust between you and audiences and eventually sell to them.
How To Combine Your Blog To Your Email
One of the most effective ways to combine the two marketing channels is to use the blog to attract your customers with your blog posts (via search engines or social media) and then use a strong call to action in order to sign them up to your email list.
This is one of the most effective ways to grow your email marketing list – once they are on your list there is very little for your blog to do unless you reverse the process as well.
There are two options for this strategy. The first is to create content via your email marketing campaigns that you can then direct to content via your blog. For instance, creating a message about the top five tips that your readers can do to save money at home and then linking it to a longer version on your blog.
This option has the added benefit of you then being able to see what content is interesting your email marketing list. Then you can segregate your list better, sending them more relevant information and moving them faster down your sales funnel.
The second strategy is to create content on your blog as usual and just inform your email audience that you have created new blog content at the end of email marketing messages. This can be effective if you have a good writer and a strong blog message. You can also benefit from knowing what information your email marketing audience is interested in by what stories they are clicking through to.
The problem with this is that because the email marketing message is not optimised to your content, you could see a lower number of people click through. It can also detract from your general email marketing message and campaign. Therefore, your results are likely to be poorer.
What Is The Best Strategy For Combination?
As with all marketing, the best strategy for email and blogging combination is to plan ahead. Be sure that you are at least one week, if not longer ahead of your publishing schedule and you will always be able to create a powerful online marketing campaign that uses both blogging and email marketing.
In addition, by planning ahead you can create anticipation and excitement with your audiences, especially around new products and services.
Conclusion
Blogging and email marketing are two elements of the digital marketing sales process that can and should be combined for more powerful marketing campaigns. Whether you have it that blogging generates leads for your email system, you use blogs to discover what is interesting your email readers at present or you use a combination of both – there are numerous benefits of combining the two channels to make your business a greater success.
Do you combine email and blogging? What is your strategy?
Let us know in the comments below.
Take Action:
- Write and publish a blog post.
- Create an email marketing campaign to promote that blog post.
- Segment your list based on those results.
Read post 4 Comments. Tagged in: blogging, email list, email marketing, list segregation, segregation