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A carefully-crafted content marketing strategy can revolutionize your business. Yet creating a “content strategy” means more than blogging and RTʼing inspiring messages from fellow thought leaders. To succeed, you must cohesively combine components like blogging, social media and, you guessed it — EMAIL! Thatʼs right; email is a critical component of your content marketing strategy.
Why?
Short answer: because email catalyzes conversations. And conversations are at the heart of content marketing. Though you can find multiple definitions of content marketing online, hereʼs the basic idea: content marketing is a way of sharing valuable content to get people (hopefully your potential clients!) to know, like, and trust you.
You probably already know how to create valuable content, publish it online, and drive engagement through social media. But did you know that email marketing is the glue that holds the pieces of your content marketing strategy together?
Hereʼs how email makes your overall content marketing strategy more effective:
1. Email Helps You Become a Shepherd, Not a Salesperson
Rather than pushing prospective customers to purchase your products or services, youʼre using helpful content to attract them to your website. Maybe theyʼve read one of your smart blog posts, or downloaded one of your useful eBooks?
However theyʼve connected with you, itʼs time to use email to build stronger relationships over time. If youʼre following the best practices of content marketing, youʼve been gathering email addresses from prospective customers when they engage with your content online.
So, simply use those email addresses and create campaigns that nurture ongoing relationships. For example, if youʼre a business that offers custom catering, then consider creating campaigns that share cooking tips and tricks for busy people. Or, maybe youʼre a business that offers software services to photographers? Then, create campaigns that share ideas for creating simple estimates or invoices for photo shoots.
Sending regular emails with helpful and meaningful content will solidify your relationships with current — and potential — customers and keep you at the top of their minds when they consider making a purchase.
2. Email Builds Your Reputation
Just as email can help you forge long-term relationships with potential customers, it can also improve your reputation in the marketplace. No matter what market youʼre in, sending inspiring or instructional emails to your current — or prospective —customers helps you maintain brand worthiness — thatʼs the impression people get when they interact with your brand.
In other words, when you consistently send awesome emails with useful information, people perceive your brand as worthy of their attention. And then theyʼll think of you first when considering a purchase! Plus, your audience also gets warm-and-fuzzy feelings when they open their inboxes and find genuinely helpful emails from you. Those feelings can create customer evangelists for you!
The way you share content says a lot about your company. A thoughtful — and useful —email campaign can go a long way to build a positive reputation for your brand.
3. Email Helps Promote Products and Services
Sharing information about your products and services is easy when you have an audience of engaged listeners. Because your audience has been built on loyalty and trust, people who receive your emails will happily engage with content that pertains to your brand. Thatʼs why email marketing campaigns are a great way to turn prospects into clients and and repeat clients into loyal followers.
When you show value to your prospective clients first, without asking for anything in return, you have the opportunity to turn them into paying clients using follow-up and “lead nurturing” emails. Since your audience has already shared their email addresses with you, theyʼre ready to have a conversation about your brand, your products and services. Thatʼs why emails are so important in the sales process.
When youʼre running special promos, or seasonal offers, be sure to use conversational emails to reach your customers. Even more important, be sure to tell them that theyʼre getting something special — something unique — that your blog readers arenʼt getting! After all, these are the people who trusted you enough to share their email addresses. Thank them by sharing something special via email.
When the online dust settles, what weʼll see is successful companies doing more than tweeting or blogging. Successful companies recognize the value of email in their content strategies and use it consistently to share substantive information. And thatʼs why email should be a critical component of your content marketing strategy, too.
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Rachel LaCour Niesen is a storyteller at heart. As a marketing strategist, she helps clients build blogs, create editorial calendars, design infographics and write whitepapers. She enjoys every opportunity to collaborate with small businesses to create valuable content that resonates with their audiences — and makes everyoneʼs lives a little more fun in the process!