You want to start email marketing, but you are frozen at the starting gate. With more than 28% of your customer’s workweek spent in the email inbox, you want to reach them where they will open and respond to your message.
Chances are you are frozen because you can’t figure out what to send to people in your email list that will be welcomed. Instead of getting started you question the value of what you have to offer.
Let’s make it easier for you.
Writing the Email Itself
When you understand the email only has one purpose, composing the email itself becomes quite easy. All you want to accomplish is to trigger the reader to click on a hyperlink and go to a highly valuable and relevant content piece.
Keep it short and sweet. It’s best to not exceed 5-6 brief sentences. The juicy part of this type of email is you are able to use your CRM dashboard to watch who opens the email and who clicks on the link to your content.
Beyond the message you want to convey to your customer (or prospective customer) is a feedback loop to inform your future emails. Email marketing then becomes a consistently improving channel for producing sales based on what you learn by the reader’s actions.
Content from Others
There is nothing wrong with sending your email recipients to content written by others. In fact, the very act of sending them to another company makes you look like a generous and knowledgeable – far from the money-grubbing image expected by the buyer.
The term for this type of content is “curation”. In other words, you spend time selecting information you know your customers will value and include it in your email marketing efforts. The curated content is doubly valuable because your prospect is saved time and effort organizing and prioritizing the huge quantity of information out there. You help them cut through the clutter.
Sources for curated content are everywhere:
- Examine what you are reading to discover helpful information your readers might misunderstand.
- Look for non-competitive companies who serve the same group of sales leads.
- Industry newsletters are often a good resource of educational material.
Originally Developed Content
First, keep in mind that not all content is written in prose. A video of you or some other staff member sitting and explaining something about your business could be priceless. In most cases, you don’t want to over-produce the videos. One person talking in a genuine, conversational tone is more welcome than a flashy professional video.
Your staff encounters the perfect subjects for your original content every day. It is simply a matter of training people to jot down notes about conversations with customers. Determine what is being asked on a regular basis and answer those questions in a blog post. The bonus to this type of content is the educational value may actually save you time and money the next time the questions come up.