A couple days ago I posted about the importance of email marketing for small businesses. In this post I’m going to give you some easy ways to create content for your email messages.
With blog posting, guest posting, videos and social media updates, by the time you move on to email marketing it can be overwhelming by the sheer amount of writing that is required to effectively market your business.
Fortunately, there are shortcuts you can use to create your email content – shortcuts that build on what you’re already doing. You don’t necessarily have to go crazy creating an entirely new class of exclusive content for your email list.
In fact, people often prefer it when you keep your email content very short, sweet, and to the point. You can use this to your advantage.
Use a Two Pronged Strategy
Each email can do two things: point readers to one item of existing content while pointing readers to one offer. The whole email should be short enough that the reader hardly has to scroll down.
I like to tell the readers a little bit about why I chose to create a certain blog post or video. For example, if I were to add this blog post to an email marketing message I might write:
Many readers tell me they’re sick of all the content that they have to create so I decided to offer you a little shortcut.
Then I add a link to that content.
If you’re an interior designer who just did a video about choosing a color scheme for your living room, your email message might read:
Color causes my customers more anxiety than any other part of their interior design. But color can be easy. This video explains how!
This takes care of making the email useful and informative for your reader without forcing you to rack your brains for more content then you’re already attempting to create.
Next, you can add a short paragraph about your offer. People expect you to market to them in an email, so this is a no-harm, no-foul sort of scenario.
So the interior designer might write:
If color still baffles you after watching my video you’ll find details about a special color consultation offer I’m running this week at the following link.
Then simply add a link to another page of the website that explains your offer. Easy!
If you really want to make your life easy, do a couple week’s worth of blog posts and schedule them in advance, then set up an auto-responder within your email service provider to correspond to each of the posts.
You can be out serving your customers while your email marketing rolls on working for you!
Throw in Exclusive Offers
You want your email list to feel special, so you will add just a little bit of content nobody else sees. Specifically, your email list should be the sole recipient of coupons or coupon codes that you simply don’t offer anywhere else.
When you do this people can see the clear benefit of continuing to receive your emails. They also get an act-now reason to do business with you.
This creates a selling point for your list too as you can market this very feature. You can tell everyone that signs up that they’re going to get exclusive discounts and select programs that nobody else gets.
You can expand this beyond coupons. For example, you could create a seminar or a workshop for a select group of customers that is only offered to your e-mail list.
People like to feel special. They like to feel like they’re important.
Playing into this need helps you solidify your relationships with these customers. And it’s all about the relationship.
Today’s Action Items:
- Schedule a few blog posts and emails using this easy content strategy.
