A lifeless e-mail will do nothing for your subscribers, and in return nothing for you. Whether creating awareness, generating sales, or building customer loyalty, it’s important to remember what keeps customers coming back for more.
Imagine a retail store open for business and at this location, window displays are vital to get people interested to come in and make a purchase. In our example, the windows are dressed with the latest consumer electronic equipment and technology that one could only imagine. You decide that you have to go in to see what’s inside.
You come to find that these items are only on display in the dressed up window, and the store is pretty much empty. Other than a few racks set up, all ready for these amazing electronics that you came in to see, that’s it.
Would you come in to the empty store again? Probably not.
Think of this analogy when you put your email marketing campaign to work. Get people to establish their trust in you that when they come into your store with windows that you’ve taken great care to dress up.
An eye-catching e-mail template means nothing if you don’t engage your subscribers and say something of value. Your e-mail content is crucial your e-mail campaign’s success.
Over long periods of time, marketing e-mails that contain a variety of valuable information are generally more effective than a string of similar e-mails that contain only offers. Even when you have taken the time to create a compelling offer, people just aren’t always ready to take action right away.
The longer your sales cycle is and the average time it takes for your customers to repeat purchases, the more you need to include content of value in your e-mails to keep your audience subscribed and engaged. E-mail marketing will help you build brand awareness and keep you top of mind. You can combine an offer with content that is inherently valuable to enhance the e-mail’s overall value.
To get your subscribers to be readers and action-takers, here are four tips on delivering value with e-mail content:
1. What’s in it for me?
Your email’s relevancy will answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” If your e-mail is relevant and chock full of great content, you will ensure that your subscribers stay interested and keep reading to find out more. The engaging aspect promotes activity within your email, such as drawing readers to your Web site for a call to action, ensuring click-throughs to additional content, or encouraging readers to forward your newsletter or promotion to friends and colleagues who might also find value in what you have to offer.
This is the first thing readers will ask themselves when opening an email, after they’ve been greeted with your subject line. Take a few seconds to answer that question – that’s all you will get from your subscribers.
Content should always be relevant and engaging. If either element is lacking, your reader will close out your e-mail and hit delete. If that happens once too often for your subscriber, they may go one step further and block your future emails, and could potentially report you as a spammer.
Your e-mail’s main goal is to deliver information to your subscribers. Look for facts, data and expert’s opinions to add validity and an element of authority to the information you share.
2. Aggregate content and save yourself a headache.
Save yourself the time of having to look for new sources of information each time you want to share something with your audience. Save your audience time as well by collecting the information for them from the myriad of resources out there. Write your opinion on these sources, and if you feature the article, make sure you have permission from the author and publication to do so.
3. Know your audience – analyze.
I can’t stress enough how important it is for you to take a step towards providing relevant content. You can’t do this without is knowing whom you’re writing to. Is your subscribed base made up of 60-year-old working business men who enjoy golf or a teenage audience interested in the latest fashion of the day? It’s very likely that you could have a wide variety of customers. It’s very important to segment and target your content based on their specific interests. Otherwise, your e-mails will fall on deaf ears, and you can watch your e-mail subscription base to dwindle away.
To help you figure out those interests, you can use e-mail analytics tools that offer reporting to learn more about your subscriber base. Pay close attention to variables such as open and click-through rates. Analyze these over time compared with past campaign reports to better understand what gets their attention and makes them take an action (like clicking on a link). Was the link attached to an irresistible image? Was the link relating to a particular topic? What does it seem like your audience is most likely to be interested in? Take a look at what prompts your audience to act.
4. Get to the point.
With just mere seconds to capture your readers’ attention, you’ve got to sift through the fluffy content to get to the point. Plan out your content strategically to for a message that is clear and concise. It’s your job to make it easier on your customers to the stuff that really sparks their interests. And if you send out more frequent e-mails, keep it short and sweet.
Remember, the content you provide is the main reason your customers subscribed to your email or newsletter in the first place. Make your content valuable! It is the key to executing successful campaigns, growing your subscriber following, and getting them to keep coming back for more.
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Want more tips on delivering value with e-mail content? Join us on Wednesday, November 14, 2012 in Wayne, NJ for a free seminar! Ultimately, we want to help you use marketing tools to help you be successful at trade shows. Whether it’s driving traffic to your booth, or letting people know what your up to in social media, we have been offering a series of valuable seminars with our partner, Constant Contact. You can check out some of the multimedia materials from our last event.
At 11am, join Vickie Siculiano, our Marketing Manager, for her presentation, “Delivering Value with E-Mail Content.” This blog post is just a taste of more e-mail marketing tips to come!
Check out more info on this exciting FREE event.
See you there!
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