If content is king, distribution is queen. Find out in this article why the integration of Content Marketing and E-Mail Marketing will help you have more effective communication with your audience.
Content Marketing is a strategy focused on attracting potential customers through relevant content that is distributed on the digital channels that your audience is on.
These digital channels can be social networks , your company blog, native advertising or, the one that interests us today, email.
However, achieving success with a content strategy requires a medium-term job that includes defining your buyer persona, planning, creating and distributing the content and, finally, measuring results.
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Whether you are already working with content or are learning about it, in this article you will discover why you need to incorporate E-mail Marketing into your content strategy .
Content Marketing and E-mail Marketing: two sides of the same coin
First of all, it must be clear that Content Marketing and E-mail Marketing are complementary strategies that seek to deliver the right message to the right person when they need it.
You cannot do Email Marketing without relevant content to deliver. In the same way, you cannot talk about Content Marketing without distribution channels like email.
Although there are other distribution channels, the truth is that E-mail Marketing is one of the strategies with the best ROI of all Digital Marketing , since it takes advantage of the interest of readers by subscribing to a mailing list to deliver content that will take them throughout the sales funnel.
Despite the fact that for years E-mail Marketing was synonymous with spam and mass communications with no personalization, today, thanks to the advancement of automation tools , E-mail Marketing is one of the most effective ways of maintaining a direct communication with clients.
What are the contents that you can use in Email Marketing?
It can be seen that Email Marketing is far from dying, but it is very important to understand how to use the strategy to nurture those leads and make current customers fall in love.
For this, the content that is delivered is crucial to communicate your message.
We can classify the content into 3 categories.
► Transactional email
It is an email that is sent as a result of user interaction with the website.
For example, automatic confirmation messages for a transaction, such as confirming a registration, purchasing airline tickets, downloading requests, or responding to requests such as resetting a password.
► Relational email
It is a message sent with the purpose of building a relationship with the audience and increasing the connection between the brand and the consumer . This content is valuable in taking users through the sales funnel.
Newsletters and welcome messages are excellent examples of relational emails.
► Promotional email
It is an email oriented to the sale . As a general rule, these emails should only be sent to users who are in the last stage of the sales funnel, that is, those who have shown interest in buying a product.
Some examples are disclosure of discount coupons, offers, sales notifications, information about new products, invitations to events, etc.
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Below you will see how to integrate Content Marketing and E-mail Marketing.
· How do strategies participate in the sales funnel?
Did you see that in the previous section we talked about the sales funnel? Well, this is because one of the advantages of Email Marketing is that it allows you to program specific shots to certain users who are at a certain stage of their trajectory until the decision to purchase a service.
These users can be identified and grouped through lead qualification.
► Give due value to each lead
Lead qualification is about assigning a value to each contact on your subscriber list according to their proximity to your buyer person and their level of interaction with your content to find out what stage the sales funnel is in.
Those users who open your emails, who interact with its content and who read the entire message will be hot leads. On the contrary, the users who delete your emails as soon as they are seen will be cold leads.
Lead qualification, therefore, allows you to segment and keep your subscriber list in order, while increasing the effectiveness of your shots by delivering relevant messages to interested audiences.
► Applying lead qualification according to content
Now, you can rate leads according to 3 variables:
● Their degree of affinity with your buyer persona,
● Their level of knowledge of your company,
● The stage of the funnel where you are.
Considering that one of the best ways to create a subscriber list is by delivering hidden content after a landing page, you can use the data captured in them to assign a rating.
In your strategy, you can create different content for each stage of the funnel.
● Top of the funnel (recognition stage): blog posts, videos, infographics, newsletters.
● Funnel medium (consideration stage): templates or tools, podcasts, checklists, complete Ebooks, reports.
● Funnel fund (decision stage): success stories, webinars, samples, free demos, quotes, white papers.
Depending on the extent or degree of specialization of the material, you can create shorter or longer landing pages.
The more information you have about each lead, the better you can rate it. For example, you can rate the degree of affinity of your lead according to its geographical location, age, sex, sector in which it works, interests, etc.
All this you can know through a landing page !
Likewise, interactions such as visits to your website, subscriptions to the mailing list or the download of more specialized materials will allow you to know the degree of knowledge of your company of that lead.
Finally, if a lead downloads a quote or clicks on an email about discounts, you will know it is in the funnel decision stage.
This is how content helps you rank your leads and deliver interesting messages that convert!
4 good practices of Content Marketing and E-mail Marketing
You already know how Content Marketing and E-mail Marketing are integrated and help you maintain direct and effective communications with your customers.
It is time to learn how to implement these strategies! Below we share 4 good practices to create E-mail Marketing campaigns with relevant content.
1. Create a subscriber list
Creating a list of people interested in receiving your content is vital for E-mail Marketing. Without this, you will not be able to work on this strategy.
To do this, you must include subscription fields in strategic places on your website such as the sidebar, through pop-ups, at the end of blog posts or on landing pages.
In addition to being expensive, you will have contacts that never expressed interest in your content or your company, so you will surely end up in the spam folder . But still, you may be violating the privacy policy of users.
2. Plan how you will communicate with subscribers
Now that you have a subscriber list of 50, 200, or 5,000 users, you can use lead scoring to rank them and thus deliver a relevant message to each audience.
Based on your buyer people and the stage of the funnel in which your subscribers are, you will have to establish the frequency of shots, the schedules, the language that you will use in the email message and, ultimately, the content that you will deliver.
Will they be promotional or relational emails ? Will you send them on Monday morning or Friday afternoon? Define all variables at this point.
3. Measure the results
The advantage of Digital Marketing is that everything can be measured! In E-mail Marketing it is not different. Some metrics you can track are:
● list size;
● delivery rate;
● opening rate ;
● click rate;
● cancellation fee;
● conversion rate ;
● Return on Investment (ROI).
4. Look for opportunities for improvement
Considering your results, it’s time to see what worked and what can be improved. For this, a good idea is to implement A / B testing.
It works like this: you send two versions of the same email to test which one has better results. Variables like a design change, a different copy, or a better-written subject can make the difference. It’s worth experimenting!
In conclusion, Content Marketing and E-mail Marketing are complementary strategies that are needed to deliver a message that enriches your brand’s relationship with your audience.
Using these strategies in combination will allow you to deliver valuable content and increase the commitment of your leads and customers to your company.
