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Quick Tips: Content Ideas for Email Marketing Campaigns

One of the most common questions from companies engaged in Email Marketing is “Help! What do I write about in my email campaigns?”

While they are the subject experts on their products and services, the secret is to ‘package’ the ‘story’ in a way that their customers want to hear, and follow some simple time tried and tested techniques such as being relevant and targeting your ‘story’ to the appropriate audience. This is guaranteed to make that empty space in your copy less intimidating, and create campaign messages that really resonate with customers.

The first thing to remember is that unlike a regular print newsletter that typically runs four or more pages, you don’t need a lot of news to send out an email newsletter or campaign. Effective campaigns can be successful based around just one or two items (and these can be short – only a couple of paragraphs long).

Remember, too, that your customers want to hear from you and want to hear your ‘story’. So there are many topics that would be interesting to them, that showcases your expertise and knowledge. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to help you generate content ideas:

• What are the top five questions that customers ask you?
• What problems are your customers facing? What are their challenges and pain-points? What can you do to help them solve those problems?
• What information do you have that would help your customers see you as an expert?
• Have you been to any exhibitions, trade shows or conferences lately?
• Have any customers said nice things about you lately? (Ask them to give you a testimonial), or develop an interview with a satisfied customer
• Interview a ‘knowledge’ expert or staff member that has interesting things to say.
• Create a series of educational, how-to tips and articles to show how customers can benefit from your products or services, (do not confuse benefits with features – sell the sizzle and not the steak!)
• Share some behind-the-scenes information about your company, product, awards and successes
• Showcase a partner company or service.
• Broadcast news from your industry, (set up an RSS news aggregator so you have an ever increasing supply of current news)

Hopefully, you have a list of ideas for campaign topics formulating. You can prioritize them by asking if the topic would be interesting to your target audience; provide them with valuable information; will get them to take action, like get in contact with you; and does it reinforce or enhance your brand or public reputation?

If an idea mostly gets “yes” answers, it’s probably a hot topic worth pursuing in your next campaign. You can keep lower-priority ideas on a list to save for later, and remember that to look for a topical angle and adds more punch to your ‘story’.

If you are looking for a low cost in-house, email marketing service, try Constant Contact where you can sign up for a no-obligation free trial. With plans from as little as £12 per month, easy to use interface, dozens of templates, you can easily and effectively create high-impact emails that are as professional as your business.

Alternatively, if you want a total outsourced solution, contact Heart New Media who will provide high impact email marketing campaigns allowing you to concentrate on your business.

 

Jim Webster
Jim Webster is founder and Managing Director of Heart New Media and a founding Director at fhios, an international customer experience research and design consultancy. His credentials include over 25 years of business success in management, digital strategy, research and design