Five Email Marketing Strategies for Content Marketing

Here are simple email marketing strategies to improve the performance of content marketing. Learn ways to optimize email performance and how email automation can bring major efficiencies.

Email marketing might have taken a back seat to social media in recent years but email is anything but dead. Email campaigns provide unmatched conversion and reach into your customer’s inbox or mobile device. More importantly, an email CRM provides brand ownership of customer data which is never truly owned in platforms like Facebook. Get the most out of email performance with these simple and easy tips from the team at Fandom Marketing digital agency in San Diego. Look for “Pro Tip”. 

 

1. Optimize Subject Lines to Increase Open Rates

To increase your open rate, try A/B testing of different subject lines. Identify topics you’d like to test or top-performing topics you have seen your customers respond to previously. You can do this by examining click through rates, or if you’re just starting out think about what problems you are solving for customers and what value is being offered. Using those interests, craft short and catchy email subject lines to test on the same email campaign. To properly measure testing with no other factors involved you should test one thing at a time. Here’s an example using the same email to both audiences:

Product: protein bar

Test topics: health versus outdoor lifestyle

Subject Line A: Protein Packed Goodness

Subject Line B: 10 Items to Pack on Your Next Hike

Example two:

Test topics: coupon offer versus product benefit

Subject Line A: Your Protein Bar $5 Coupon

Subject Line B: 100% Natural Ingredients in Every Protein Packed Bar

Measure the success of the winning lead topic by the email open rate. Then, test the winning topic against something new until you hone in on which subject approach drives more people to open your email.

Pro Tip: Even though you may be testing two different messaging points, like the example above, the content inside must deliver what the subject line promises. Otherwise, you create a bad user experience and will likely see a drop in your click-through-rate.

 

2. Preview Solutions

Analyze your subject line and preview text from the framework of problem (subject line) and solution (preview text). Employing this strategy entices your reader to open and enriches the experience by giving them a sneak peek of the value inside. You don’t want to give away too much, tease the solution just enough to make people want to open – without being spammy. In the preview text, you can use language like “Open for offer” and “Tips for xyz inside”  to drive interest.

Pro Tip: Keep your preview text between 40-50 characters so that it displays without truncation on most devices.

 

3. Prioritize Important Content

A common mistake is to oversaturate an email with too much information. Unfortunately doing this dilutes your email’s purpose and causes confusion for the customer about what action to take. Be sure to analyze content performance in previous emails and prioritize best performing themes. If you have multiple messages to convey in one email make sure the order flows, so customers have a seamless experience in scrolling down the email. Draw the reader down the page to the primary call to action (CTA), or make sure your CTA appears above the fold if your email has a singular purpose (such as a 24-hour sale). If your newsletter is swimming in content and really struggling for purpose, optimize it by segmenting your email subscriber list and breaking out multiple campaigns by topic interest.

Pro Tip: Opening email on mobile is common practice. Stick to a streamlined design with large clickable buttons and text that will make for a user-friendly mobile experience.

 

4. Timing is Everything

Every business is different. There is no magic number for send time or send frequency. Study your analytics for data on days and times previously sent. Don’t be afraid to test new options, like unusual send times. Look for trends on your website like purchasing and visits to determine times your audience might be more engaged. If your customers place orders on the weekend, explore times when people might be thinking about the weekend ahead of time to grab their attention. While email frequency depends on your marketing goals, you should aim to send email enough to keep your audience familiar, but not so much that you are assaulting your customer’s inbox. Experiment with sending weekly or bi-weekly emails if you find that your unsubscribe rate is not suffering as a result.

Pro Tip: Link your Google Analytics account to your email service for additional data and a more complete picture on site metrics.

 

5. Automate Blogs to Email

Automation can get your content marketing out in front of readers the instant it’s published. We like Mailchimp’s RSS email automation which can be used to send blogs that regularly get posted to your website to opt-in subscribers. By doing this, you are segmenting your audience into very specific interests and in turn increasing performance rates.

Pro Tip: Make sure featured photos in RSS show up in your automated emails. If you are using WordPress along with just about any email service provider, including Mailchimp, you can use this free plugin from 5 Star Plugins to display blog images from the feed in email.

 

Put Email Marketing Strategies to Work

With these tips you can easily optimize your next newsletter on your own. If you want help nailing down your email marketing strategy or setting up a custom campaign visit Fandom Marketing to get a free quote on email marketing services.