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One evening, I heard my colleagues wishing each other a happy long weekend, and I wondered what to do on my upcoming Saturday and Sunday.
Suddenly, my phone buzzed with a new email notification. It was a fancy newsletter from a resort, advertising their current promotions and showcasing their rooms and scenic views. Intrigued, I clicked the link and perused their website, ultimately deciding to book a room for a special getaway.
That’s how email marketing works. Reaching the right audience with the right content at the right time!
We all know email marketing has been around for over a decade, but that remains one of the most effective ways to reach and engage with your target audience. In fact, it’s a powerful tool all businesses worldwide consider and align with their content marketing strategy.
As we all know, email marketing is the only channel earning an ROI of $40 for every $1 spent.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how email marketing strategy integrates with content marketing strategy and how they both gel up and work together effectively for business growth.
Defining Email Marketing and Content Marketing
Though email marketing and content marketing are two distinct concepts, they can likely converge to take your business to the next level.
Email marketing is a go-to marketing channel opted for by marketers and business owners to send targeted and personalized emails to their subscribers.
It can be anything from promotional emails to company updates. After all, email marketing is the best way to build relationships with your audience, which drives traffic to your website.
On the flip side, content marketing is a broad strategy that is all about creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content that helps to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.
It can be in the form of blogs, newsletters, videos, social media posts, or e-books.
Convergence of Email Marketing and Content Marketing: How Does It Happen?
Usually, brands enhance their visibility to their audience by creating and distributing all types of branded content like blogs, e-books, webinars, podcasts, newsletters, lead magnets, etc. This created content further extends its reach by aligning with email marketing efforts.
Interestingly, 72% of marketers encounter email marketing strategies in their content marketing strategy.
However, email content is remitted to your potential customers who are genuinely interested in your brand and signed up to be on your email list, unlike other content you create.
Benefits of Converging Email Marketing and Content Marketing Strategy
Undoubtedly, both email and content marketing are two powerful strategies that can help your business connect with your audience and drive more conversation. But, in this phase, content marketing strategy should help your email marketing approach in two ways
Firstly, you create content to capture email marketing leads
Secondly, you create content to nurture the email leads and convert them into buyers
A content marketing strategy is effective when combined with an email marketing strategy.
Six Steps to Integrate Your Email Marketing Strategy with Content Marketing Strategy
The ultimate goal of every marketer and business owner is to generate high-quality leads for your business.
One effective way to do this is to align your email marketing and content marketing strategies that can help you nurture and generate quality leads for your business via email while avoiding spammy emails.
Furthermore, you can also create valuable content that appeals to your audience and enhance your brand visibility. With a whopping 4.03 billion people currently using email marketing worldwide, it’s no surprise that this approach is expected to continue growing.
In fact, India Hughes, the marketing operation manager from Genbook, entirely agrees with this approach. She says, “Content and Email marketing efforts can be greater than the sum of their parts when they are leveraged together”.
1. Create lead-captivating Content
The primary objective of any business is to generate qualified leads that convert into buyers. Simply put, it is the process of moving customers down through the sales funnel.
Marketers strive to capture highly qualified leads through various methods. One effective method is content marketing, which involves creating valuable, search-engine-optimized content (such as blog posts) that addresses the needs of your audience and targets the keywords they use to search on Google.
Doing so can drive traffic to your website and increase your chances of generating qualified leads.
See how Spendee does this:
- Spendee offers its audience a useful blog on how to start using the application properly and how to connect your banks to the app, which is given in detail.
2. Provide Unique Content via Email
Developing a valuable SEO-optimized blog is important for your content strategy. On the other hand, convincing the readers to convert as leads is another challenge.
However, by offering all unique and valuable content without any gateway, there is no reason for your readers to join your email list. This is the place where you have to provide them with some incentives to join your email list.
It can be by giving unique content exclusively for them directly to their inbox or offering them some promotion on deals only for users to join via email list. It is also said that 30% of marketers invest in promotional emails.
See how SEJ does this strategically:
- SEJ is a great example of collecting email lists by offering valuable resources to its audience. Subscribers can choose the topics they’re interested in and receive updates, with the added option of actionable insights from industry experts.
3. Segment and Personalize Email Content
Without debate, as a marketer or business owner, you know that email personalization is the tactic that amplifies your email marketing performance. Segmentation is the strategy that boosts engagement and helps you to reach your potential buyers based on their interests.
According to Pon Pandian, CEO of Targetbay, “Successful email marketing relies on email deliverability. If your email doesn’t end up in the recipient’s inbox, it’s pointless”.
Creating targeted content that speaks to each audience is personalization. This provides humanized contact with your audience through content from your brand to your recipients. If you have segmented your audience, you can use email marketing software to automate this process with a template and relevant data.
4. Include Educational Content in your Emails
This is a good approach to integrating your content marketing with your email marketing strategy. Yes! 45% of the marketers are looking to add educational content as part of the content strategy, as this provides value and helps to nurture the leads.
When designing and crafting an email campaign, remember it shouldn’t be normal boring content or blasting email. Instead, it should offer your target audience value and solutions to their industry-related problems. This way helps you showcase your expertise as a brand, building trust between you and your audience.
5. Nurture Subscribers with Brand Voice
Nowadays, marketing is multichannel. Even your audience expects to see your brand’s marketing on multiple platforms, and the brands that are present in more than one channel visibly see 300% conversion, according to Omnisend.
This clearly says multi-channel strategy should be on the radar with consistent branding because it is the key to the brand.
Neil Patel’s email marketing is a great example:
- You can view Neil Patel’s email content, which is direct, personalized, and features a simple design. Clicking the link takes you to a blog that explains his concept in more detail.
6. Test your Email Content and Tweak It
Testing and refining your email campaigns is essential. As a marketer, you’re aware that what works well for email campaigns today might not yield the same results tomorrow. The process remains consistent:
- Create tailored content for each segmented audience following segmentation.
- Test the performance of each email campaign.
- Analyze the email campaign performance to determine which content is most effective.
Did you know that 85% of the marketers test their email campaigns? Don’t be scared to do the same. Perform an A/B test of your email campaigns and see which content brings in more conversions.
Put Email Marketing and Content Marketing Strategies to Work
Avoid segregating your email campaigns; rather, incorporate a content marketing strategy into your email marketing approach to attract well-suited leads to your business. While email and content each hold their strength, combining them can unlock success and propel you towards your business objectives.
Elevate your lead generation by seamlessly blending content marketing strategies into every email campaign. Enhance this process by automating your email campaigns using the appropriate email marketing software.
Stalia.S is a content marketer at https://www.scrollreads.com/, an eCommerce marketing cloud used by thousands of online stores worldwide. She enjoys researching and writing about email marketing, product reviews, and more. In her free time, she loves exploring new places and tasting delicious cuisines.
