Content should be used across your marketing campaigns on various platforms. As far as email campaigns are concerned, they offer a great way of building trusting relationships between your business and customers. They give you the opportunity to directly communicate with someone, which separates email from social media marketing or paid ads. With this in mind, what content should you be using when interacting with clients over email?
In most cases, if someone is on your mailing list they will already be aware of your business and what you offer. This means there is a difference between effective email marketing and effective social media marketing, where there is a greater focus on brand awareness and engaging an audience. Those on your mailing list will be familiar with you already; they’ll be further along in the customer journey. Accordingly, your focus should be different.
The contrast can be summarised as engagement vs re-engagement. On social media one of your goals needs to be engaging customers with your brand. You need to stand out from your competitors and the countless other pages online. With email marketing, though, it’s about reminding customers of why they were interested in your business in the first place and communicating with them to influence their decision to buy. So you shouldn’t be worrying so much about engaging or capturing the attention (although it’s still crucial that your emails do this!), you should instead place more of an emphasis on building a relationship which will lead to sales.
Email marketing straddles the Awareness and Consideration stages of the customer journey, so you should focus on adding value through educational content and connecting with your customers to build trust.
The key to moving a potential client past the Consideration stage of the customer journey is by building trust. Email offers a huge opportunity to do this through direct communication that you can tailor according to different clients!
For example, you might have different mailing lists depending on what product they expressed interest in, their location, whether they have bought from your business before, and so on. All of these mean you can send them valuable information that they will truly benefit from. As a result you will see the volume and warmth of your leads increase as well as conversion rate and return customers.
So you need relevant, educational content that will add value to your clients. What could you include?
Create content that shows your business is at the cutting edge of its industry. This will appeal to your audience at large and show your expertise.
This kind of content is great for new subscribers as it will nurture a broad section of your mailing list.
Create content that is specific to certain groups of your audience. Maybe people who bought a specific product or left a good review. This will speak directly to them and will likely be extremely relevant, increasing the chances of engagement and of carrying out any call to action included in your communications.
What better way of convincing your clients to buy from your business than by showing successful customer stories from the past?
As well as this, they show clear examples of your good work. How could this not influence the decision to buy?
Show how to use your product, or how your service works. Put any questions that people might have about your business to bed with demonstrations that clearly answer any question they might have!
You might want to create content for a new offer, new product, or new team member. These keep things fresh and show you’re up to date, and nurture a relationship with your client where they feel they really know your team!
So is your business utilising its content in the best possible ways? Use educational, value-adding content to build relationships with clients and influence their decision to buy from your business.
Email offers a great opportunity of connecting with people personally and providing them with information that will really benefit them. This will contribute towards a positive impression of your business, placing you in a position of authority, building trust, and increasing sales!
