Could your email marketing use a major boost? If so, you’re in luck! This week’s #ContentWritingChat was all about how to create customer-centric email content. Keep reading for the recap and be sure to apply these tips to your next email newsletter! #ContentWritingChat Recap: How to Create Customer-Centric Email Content with Kristen Dunleavy Join us for #ContentWritingChat on Tuesday, March 28th at 10 AM Central with our guest host, @KristenWritesIt! pic.twitter.com/hsbFAHiknB — Express Writers (@ExpWriters) March 21, 2017 Our guest host this week was Kristen Dunleavy. Kristen frequently joins #ContentWritingChat as a participant, so we were excited to have her step in and guest host. As the Content Marketing Manager for Movable Ink, she had tons of great tips to share on email content. Q1: How do you define customer-centric email content? So, what exactly does customer-centric email content mean? To kick off this week’s chat, we asked our participants to share their definitions of it. Here’s what they had to say: A1a. Customer centric email content spotlights your customer & their interactions w/ your brand. #contentwritingchat — Kristen Dunleavy (@KristenWritesIt) March 28, 2017 A1b. This includes using customer testimonials, personalized content & always, always addressing their needs. #contentwritingchat — Kristen Dunleavy (@KristenWritesIt) March 28, 2017 Kristen said that customer-centric email content spotlights your customer and their interactions with your brand. While this may seem simple, it’s a great way to show your customers that you appreciate them. They’ll love it! To do this, focus on your customers by using testimonials, personalized content, and addressing their needs. A1 Make it ALL about them. Don’t sell till you’ve become their friend/built a relationship. #ContentWritingChat — Julia McCoy ? (@JuliaEMcCoy) March 28, 2017 Julia’s advice is to make your email content all about your customers. Don’t try to sell to them until you’ve built a relationship with them. After all, you need to build a level of trust first before they ever take that next step. A1:Customer-centric email content is email that a) provides value and b) speaks in a tone that your customer understands #contentwritingchat — Maureen Jann (@MaureenOnPoint) March 28, 2017 Maureen said this kind of email content provides value and speaks in a tone that your customers understands. This is key to remember not just for creating email content, but also blog posts, social media posts, and much more. A1: email content should be useful for customers while keeping your ROI goals in mind. Be a help, not a bother. #contentwritingchat — Elizabeth Greenberg (@BettaBeYou) March 28, 2017 As Elizabeth said, it’s important to create email content that’s useful for your customers, but it should also help you reach your end goals. Know what you hope to achieve with each email you send and create the content that will help you get there. A1 Customer-centric email content addresses the key pain points of your audience. Instead of asking, it gives. #contentwritingchat — Bill Skowronski (@BillSkowronski) March 28, 2017 Give, give, give! One thing to remember when creating email content is that you should give to your audience more than you ask of them. As Bill said, you can do this by addressing the key pain points your audience is facing. Q2: What are the benefits of creating customer-centric email content? Now that you know what customer-centric email content it is, you need to know the benefits it can provide to you. Here’s what some of the chat participants had to say: A2a. Spotlighting customers builds trust with your biggest fans – your email subscribers! #contentwritingchat — Kristen Dunleavy (@KristenWritesIt) March 28, 2017 Kristen knows that spotlighting your customers is a great way to build trust with your audience. Having a certain level of trust is key if you ever want to convert those subscribers into customers and this is a great way to go about it. A2 Customer-centric email content establishes trust and value, which produces higher open rates and click-through rates #contentwritingchat — Bill Skowronski (@BillSkowronski) March 28, 2017 Bill agrees that it’s a great way to build trust with your audience. By adding value and having an audience that trusts you, you’ll see higher open rates and click-through rates. A2: Benefits of customer-centric email include trust, self-selection, tribe integration&satisfaction of a job well done. #contentwritingchat — Maureen Jann (@MaureenOnPoint) March 28, 2017 Maureen said its benefits include: trust, self-selection, tribe integration, and the satisfaction of a job well done. @ExpWriters A2. Benefits are creating a community around your business and you make friends at the same time #ContentWritingChat — Cheval John (@chevd80) March 28, 2017 Cheval said it’s a great way to create a community around your business. It’s also essential to help you build a relationship with your subscribers. A2. Customer will feel special and will start the journey to become an advocate for your brand #contentwritingchat https://t.co/F9yVqUiMK8 — Vivek (@vivektweetsso) March 28, 2017 Customer-centric email content is one way to make your audience feel special. When they feel special, they’ll appreciate your brand even more. A2 Email is a much more personal form of communication. Use it to your advantage and cater to them! #ContentWritingChat pic.twitter.com/U0BPtgXAlU — HeyOrca! (@HeyOrca) March 28, 2017 Email is such a personal form of communication, so use that to your advantage. It’s an amazing way to connect with your audience. Q3: How is featuring your customers in your emails different from other mediums? Emails are just one place you can feature your customers. You can also do so on social media and your blog. But how is it different when it’s done through email? Check out these answers from the chat: A3. Email is super personal – therefore, your email content should feel personal too! #contentwritingchat — Kristen Dunleavy (@KristenWritesIt) March 28, 2017 As Kristen said, email is very personal so you should make your content feel that way as well. If people chose to let you into their inbox, you need to deliver content that speaks to them. A3: IMO, it feels like more of a 1:1 interaction … Read more
Have you ever wondered how effective your emails are? Do they leave an impression, or just end up in the trash folder? It may be that you measure email success by the amount of people who open it and then click through. Which means that the email first has to be opened, then read, then clicked. Not to mention it also has to be the appropriate length and interesting enough to engage readers and move them to action. How much does email length matter? Can your tone shine through, and does anyone really read the subject line, anyway? We’re here to break the answers to these questions down, and give you an updated guide (with a recent Boomerang exclusive!) all about email content marketing. Boost your email results when you put these into practice. Keep reading! Email Marketing 101 Email is still critical to our content marketing efforts today. Take a look at these email marketing stats for a better understanding of the impact email has in the industry: Marketers have seen a 760% increase in revenue from segmented email campaigns. Automated email messages average over 70% higher open rates and over 150% higher click-through rates than “business as usual” messages. Email is 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than Twitter or Facebook. Email is the connection between us and our prospects. When content marketers invest their time and resources into powerful emails, the reach potential is limitless. While technology has changed and social media has emerged over the past decade, email has stayed as a constant. Sure, we may not be using the same domain we did ten years ago, but the truth remains that when we need to send information, we email it. When we want to be connected to our favorite brand, we join their email list. Need a receipt for your store purchase, but don’t want a paper copy? Have it emailed. For these reasons and more, content marketing efforts can be enhanced when we learn to take the best email marketing practices and use them effectively. 3 Best Email Content Marketing Practices Back in the early 90’s, email hit the scene. Remember those AOL disks that were available through the mail and at the grocery store checkout stand? And how we communicate has not been the same since. (Letters? What are those?) Fast-forward to 2017, when 93% of marketers now say they use email for content distribution and consider it an important channel for their marketing success. And while it does remain an effective tool, it doesn’t mean we always use it in the best way. Emails have a wide range of possibilities in reaching an audience, including: Newsletters Product updates Transactional emails (after one has taken action on your website) Deals and promotions There are some qualities that make email an effective tool for your content marketing efforts. We have to learn the best way to increase the open rate, how to craft a subject line, how to create quality content, and how to choose the best time to write. 1. Learn How to Write a Great Email You may be thinking, “Wait a minute. I’m a content writer. I know how to write.” Isn’t it true that if we all knew how to write effective emails, there would be a higher response rate and we would be inundated with conversions? Especially since over 200 billion email messages are sent every day. So, yes, we can all use reminders from time to time about how to write effectively, and specifically, how to craft an email that engages the audience and encourages action. A. Craft a compelling subject line This seems like an obvious one, but if the subject isn’t engaging, few readers will want to click through to the actual content. Start by incorporating language that tells the reader what he or she can look forward to in the email. Words like “take,” “don’t miss,” and “reserve” are goods one to start with. B. Use personalization, if you can Shaping email content to fit a reader’s needs by using customer segmentation has the potential to increase revenue. In a study conducted by Direct Marketing Association, emails which were segmented and targeted generated 58 percent of the total revenue for marketers surveyed while 36 percent of revenue came from emails sent to specific target selections. C. Create relevant and honest content No one wants their time wasted, so coming up with a catchy email subject line that has nothing to do with the content inside is unfair and irresponsible. While you are crafting an engaging and personalized subject line, keep in mind that it should align with the content in the actual email. This not only keeps everything relevant, but sets you apart as an honest authority who isn’t out to trick anyone into clicking. D. Continue to offer relevancy by expressing to the reader right away why you are writing What is your connection? How are you providing a solution to the need? Our reach will go much farther when we highlight the benefits rather than the feature. E. Get to the point Practice writing concisely so the end result is powerful, tight sentences. Too wordy, and you’ll lose your readers. Too short, and they could miss the point. Content marketers must find a way to summarize a catch for the reader and encourage a click-through. Everywhere we go, we see content – in just one minute, there are millions of Facebook and Instagram likes, hundreds of thousands of Tweets, and hours upon hours of YouTube videos uploaded. We are consumed by content. The last thing we need is more unusable information, interruptions, or sales pitches coming through our inbox. A long, drawn-out copy won’t cut it here; readers must be able to sift through quickly in order to make a decision about whether or not they’ll click through. Try keeping emails between 50 and 125 words, which can increase the response rate for your efforts. Suggested tool: SmartBlogger’s list of 317 Power Words 2. Learn How … Read more
For those of us who actually care that our emails get read, there are rules to live by, unfortunately.
There are tips on how to write emails that will ultimately get our message across to our readers. And when we say across, we mean that they will digest every bit of the content of our emails and not just the parts that strike them.
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