Combining Blogs with E-mail Marketing

8 ways to combine blogs with e-mail marketing

“Email marketing and blog serve different purposes, and a smart content marketing program will usually include both”. Because while your blog is the best avenue for getting attention online, establishing your authority, and getting found in the search engine, email communication helps connect on a more intimate level, build trust with your audience, and gives you a tool for making relevant offers to your audience. And together, their power is multiplied.

If you have a blog (and by this point, we certainly hope you do), you need to make sure your blog Is working together with your email marketing efforts to serve your audience and get you closer to your content marketing goals. You can use your blog to promote your email list, and vice versa, but only if you have a symbiotic relationship between the two.

Once these givens are in place, you can make your business unstoppable by using blogging and email marketing cooperatively in the following eight ways:

1. Make blog posts your cookies

• Your job is to train people to open (and regularly read) your emails. Combining your blog content with your email campaigns is a great way to do that.
• Here’s the secret: great blog posts make the world’s best cookies. So when you’ve put up a new post, send it out to you list.

Consider these options for sharing your blog content with your email list:

• When you publish a new post, manually send an email broadcast to your list that includes a teaser sentence or two about your post. Always include a link back to the blog post on your site.
• Share the whole blog post via an individual email to your list, and link back to the post at the end. If you want to encourage conversation, ask people to comment by saying “Join the conversation on the blog” or something similar.
• Send out a weekly, Bi –weekly, or monthly newsletter that includes links to your best blog post.

2. Create FAQ auto responders

• Create a collection of insanely useful lessons or answers to frequently asked questions, and then put them into an email auto responder series. In your auto responders, include lots of links back to your foundation blog content.
• And if you want to get really fancy, you can even create content categories that correspond with you auto responders and link to those categories.

3. Don’t forget your footer!

• In the footer of your blog posts, add a pot –in offer of some sort. Prompt your readers to sign up to get free updates from your blog, receive a free piece of premium content, or get your content –rich monthly newsletter.

4. Schedule for content synergy

• Create editorial calendars for your blog and your email marketing campaigns that share common themes and work together. Your goal is to publish a clear, coherent message for your audience, and that includes all the tools in your content marketing toolbox.

5. Feature your guest blog posts.

• Doing this gave you a chance to feature your writing on the other sites, and it introduced new websites to your audience members who were looking for a new and useful blogs to read.

6. Allow yourself to introduce… yourself

• Right before you launch a new product, you can reinvigorate your list by sending a couple of pieces of smart, well –positioned content that is related to the topic of your product. This is especially good move if you haven’t been communicating with your list on a regular basis.

7. Offer free updates conspicuously

• Create a “Free Updates” page for your website that allows people to easily sign up for your list and get a free ebook, video, or other piece of premium content. Then link to that page in the navigation bar of your site and make it visible on every page of your site –you never know what page or post of your site a reader might discover first.

8. Take full advantage of social media

• Use social networking sites like Facebook and twitter to further your content marketing goals, not just as fun distractions that make you feel like you’re productive.
• Make sure you’re driving traffic from social networking platforms back to your content and onto your email list. Social networking can be a huge asset for your business, but only if you stay focused on your goal.

photo credit: http://www.brandwork.co.uk/blog/tips-for-email-marketing/