Email marketing has always been one of the most effective ways of marketing. How can one re-purpose their existing content to use effectively in emails?
Ever since Bill Gates wrote his 1996 essay, ‘Content is king’, it is a phrase that’s often emphasized. If you do any sort of marketing, then it revolves around the content you produce. And, in many cases, good content is specifically tailored and aimed at your target demographics. What we produce as content also says much about who we are as a business.
Many might even describe our content, in all its forms, as almost a type of art. We use it to inform, educate, entertain, and entice. We weave words, images, and videos into stories that we hope will beguile our customers and lead to sales. But content is not all equal. What works well on one platform may not translate well to another one and this is something we must focus on.
When it comes to email marketing, we need to be very careful with what we send in order to retain the customers’ attention and interest. Knowing email marketing trends that will help with success can be of huge benefit. And choosing the right email app with great features can also assist us. But what if we have great content already created? How do we repurpose that for our email campaigns?
Planning your repurposing
So, you have a wealth of great content that you want to start repurposing so you can use effectively in emails? The first thing to do is make a plan:
1. Define your goals
What are the goals, or micro-goals, of your email marketing campaign? Is it to increase your sales? To direct customers to a particular site or landing page? To increase engagement levels? To spread awareness of a new product? Or to help with onboarding?
By identifying the specific goals of your campaign, you can then identify which content you will repurpose. For example, if focusing on a particular product, such as mobile usability testing, you may decide to choose content such as customer reviews, product benefits, etc.
2. What is your audience?
Who will you be sending your emails to? Will the campaign involve blanket coverage of your mailing list or will it focus on different segments of that list? Your target audience for your campaign could be the people who subscribe to your blog or they could be previous customers who you think will like what you are offering in this campaign.
Knowing why you are sending these emails will help decide who you send them to and
what you include within them. If your purpose is to increase subscribers to your blog, then you would not target existing subscribers, but other segments you feel may be interested. And when looking at email services, it is worth looking if you can subscribe to a free trial.
3. Measuring success
Of course, none of us wants to go into a campaign without some idea of how we are going to measure its success. Assigning KPIs that are relevant to your needs and to your campaign is essential. Those KPIs will depend on what goals you are aiming for. They could include actual conversions, click-through rates, etc.
At the same time you consider your KPIs, you should also be thinking in your video conference meeting room about what tools your marketing team will utilize. Are they already using a bulk email service or is this something they need to implement? Do they need a larger service or a more targeted solution?
Identifying content
Once you have your ‘battle plan’ laid out, you can begin to look at what content you are going to use and how you are going to use it. If you are an established business with a BYOC solution, you will likely have wide content including blogs, images, videos, UGC, research, etc. You want the content you use in your email campaign to deliver a message and pack a punch, so choose carefully.
The starting point for choosing that content is the goal(s) you have identified as the reason for doing the campaign. You then go through all relevant content and identify the existing content that delivers a message that could achieve your goal. So, for sales, that would be things like video guides, independent or customer reviews, etc.
This part of the process is the most important. If you choose the wrong content to repurpose, then you will not achieve your goals and may even leave your customers confused!
Follow the rules
We think it is fairly obvious to state that you want your emails to really grab your customers’ attention. What you do not want to do is simply reproduce long-form content within the email body. Be aware of some of the simple rules to follow in regards to sending out emails to customers:
- Your subject line should be between 28 and 50 characters.
- Any preheader text should be between 40 and 100 characters.
- Your actual email copy should ideally be from 50 to 125 words.
- Your CTA should be around 2 to 5 words.
While this may seem restrictive, it accounts for how people generally approach emails. People tend to have shorter ‘attention spans’ when it comes to the messages in their inboxes. Your tactics should aim for short attention-grabbing copy, relevant visuals/images, and a clear call to action (CTA).
Once you have grabbed their attention, you can then direct them to lengthier information and content by including links in your copy. For example, if you want to direct customers to your video conferencing app, you could link to a blog or to a video that demonstrates that solution’s capabilities.
Knowing the best sales prospecting techniques and applying them to how you do your email marketing can reap dividends for your campaign.
Using your CTAs properly, too, can direct more calls to your toll free number meaning more potential sales.
Ideas for repurposing
Repurposing content does not have to mean an ordinary email with snappy content and a good CTA. There are various different ways you can repurpose your content in order to engage with customers and potential customers. We look at five great ideas you can use to get your message out:
1. Blog newsletters
People usually have busy lives and may not always have the time to check in on your latest blog post. If you have a list of blog subscribers, make sure they have caught up on your latest blog(s) by sending them out a newsletter with a quick summary and relevant links. Ideally, you would do this on a weekly basis to avoid them viewing these emails as spam.
Your blog content also doesn’t always have to be brand new. If you have a general campaign, for example, that has a focus on application testing services, then your newsletter can contain links to previous blogs that contain relevant information.
2. Social media newsletters
Building your brand on social media can be challenging with most businesses now having a substantial presence across many online platforms. Indeed, these platforms are not only good for us to connect with customers but for customers to connect with us. They can tell us what they like, what they don’t like, what they want, etc. Having a round-up of your most popular posts, or ones with a lot of customer output, can create a great newsletter.
Don’t focus on one platform or type of content. Include strong images, informative or funny text, and even the results of any polls you have held on those platforms. A social media newsletter is not only a good way of repurposing existing content, it can help boost followers on any or all of the social media platforms you use.
3. Ebooks
Producing an ebook costs no money at all and just a little time and effort. They can, though, be a fantastic way of repurposing and repackaging existing content spread across your channels and platforms. Once you have put one together, you can offer it as a single free download or a chapter at a time to new and existing subscribers.
Let’s say that your site focuses on call center technology and performance. As a result, you have extensive blogs that cover all aspects of that sector, from service call management to call center agent performance metrics. You can gather all information and blogs you already have and easily combine them into a fantastic ebook that your customers will love!
4. User-generated content
We love UGC and, more importantly, customers love to see content that has been created by other customers and users. It can be a great way of validating our own perceptions and descriptions which may often be seen as being (naturally) biased. After all, around 93% of marketing professionals realize that UGC is more trusted than brand-created content.
While most brands see UGC as something primarily for use on social media, incorporating it into your email marketing campaign can create a real impact. Be careful, though, of using UGC without permission first.
5. Infographics
Infographics have always been a fantastic marketing tool and that also applies to using them within any email marketing campaign. They combine two of the best marketing components; visuals and information. They can also nurture greater interest from the customer and encourage them to click through to your site to get more detailed information.
Another great thing about infographics is that they can make a ‘dry’ subject more interesting. For example, let’s say you want to market automated QA testing. A purely text-based email may not engage people who are not overly technically minded. But an infographic could stimulate an interest in knowing more about what you offer.
The takeaway
We want to always be creating interesting and engaging content that gets our message across and helps us achieve defined goals. Equally, we do not want to constantly be creating brand new content for each platform or channel we utilize. By meeting online or offline and using the right collaboration tools to repurpose, and customize, existing content is the ideal way to recycle what we already have.
Starting with the why, what, and who, we can develop an email marketing campaign that will help to increase email click through rates. The how is also important. Follow the tips offered above, and you can supercharge your email marketing with only the content you already have at your disposal.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patty Yan, EMEA Product Marketing Manager at RingCentral
Patty is the EMEA Product Marketing Manager for RingCentral Office, the leader in cloud PBX solutions. Patty is passionate about creating value and differentiation, ensuring a better experience for customers and partners. She gained a wealth of international product marketing, product management, GTM and market development experience, across a range of high-tech SaaS in a fast-paced, hyper-growth environment that assumes both strategic and tactical execution. She is not new to UC, starting in Tandberg, then Cisco, driving the launch of video collaboration and services, and Enghouse with global responsibilities for hosted CCaaS.