So you’ve put together some goals and objectives, a blog, a video and possibly even a podcast! What comes next? You have to tell people about all the content you’re creating! So I’m going to show you how to launch an email marketing strategy to support all of that content.
I meet a lot of people who don’t consider email marketing at all – let alone as part of their content marketing strategy. Unfortunately for them, they’re missing out on one of the easiest ways to reach their audiences. There’s an old (yeah… it’s already old) myth that email is spammy and people delete it right away or it goes to their junk etc. etc. etc. but that’s a totally outdated way of viewing email now. Since the CASL rules came into effect (at least here in The Great White North) spammers have largely been ousted from our inboxes. As a result, people are starting to read email campaigns again.
And it’s a fact, email marketing works.
The first thing you should consider when you begin setting up an email marketing strategy is your goal. See how I keep coming back to that? Here’s my goal, objective, and the tactics to support it.
Goal: Develop client pipeline to increase revenue by 80% over the next three months through membership sales.
Objective: Increase email subscribers by 1000 over the next three months.
- Tactic: Create a drip marketing campaign that educates new subscribers on specific elements of content marketing and website implementation that they can action on to grow their own businesses.
- Tactic: Create an attractive signup form with call to action on each page of my website.
At a base level, this is what you need to do to get started. Having an onboarding email series for your new visitors is essential to ensure that you can begin to build brand recognition and trust over time with new leads. Having a place for visitors to sign up for your emails is also essential. Otherwise, no one will ever read your emails. 😀 I’m just looking out for ya!
Drip Email Campaigns
At a very high level, you can use a drip email campaign to educate new leads about a topic relevant to your service or product. For example, a beard manicuring company could use a campaign that teaches people how to care for their beards. A t-shirt design company could create a series on D.I.Y. silk-screening. By solving a problem for your leads, you’re developing a relationship and trust.
Here’s what an example might look like:
How to Launch a Content Marketing Strategy 101 – One email per week after signup that introduces new visitors to content marketing and how to get started (and if you’ve been following along with my emails up until now you might find this familiar!)
Email #1 – How to Launch a Content Marketing Strategy 101: Goals, Objectives and Tactics
- Trigger this email immediately after someone subscribes
Email #2 – How to Launch a Content Marketing Strategy 101: Blogs
- Trigger this email three days after the previous email
Email #3 – How to Launch a Content Marketing Strategy 101: Videos
- Trigger this email four days after the previous email
Email #4 – How to Launch a Content Marketing Strategy 101: Podcasts
- Trigger this email three days after the previous email
Email #5 – How to Launch a Content Marketing Strategy 101: Email Marketing
- Trigger this email two days after the previous email
Email #6 – How to Launch a Content Marketing Strategy 101: Wrap up and next steps
- Trigger this email one day after the previous email
You may want to play around with the timing and content, and how many emails you decide to send. Keep an eye on if/when people stop opening emails or if they unsubscribe and pivot your plan. Then pivot a few more times to find the right fit! It may not be perfect the first time around (it won’t be, actually) but by paying attention to how people are responding to your emails you’ll begin to find a plan that works. In a future post I’ll talk about the technical elements of putting together an onboarding campaign in MailChimp.
Signup Forms (to get those email addresses!)
There are a number of plugins for WordPress that integrate various email platforms. Some can be kind of bulky, but if you’re using a tool like ConvertKit which comes with its own plugin you’re probably safe. Third party plugins bug me now – they break things.
My favourite way to integrate email signups is to simply embed code into your website wherever you choose to do so. I’ve plugged my form into posts that relate to their respective email lists. I got the code for my form directly from MailChimp, and then I edited the CSS to make it look closer to what my website design looks like.
Have you tried using a drip email marketing campaign to drive email subscribers? What happened? What worked and what didn’t? Talk about it in the comments below, I’d love to hear how you’re using email to grow your business!
