Now That You’re Blogging, Pair it With Email Marketing

So much of our small business marketing efforts go back to our websites. What will we post on social media? Answer: what’s on your website? What will we send in our email marketing campaigns? Answer: what’s on your website? Blog posts. Blog posts are often looked down upon like they’re the red-headed stepchild of the Internet. But blog posts are your “invisible” salesperson. They work while you’re sleeping. They inform and persuade. So, don’t send out that next Constant Contact or Mailchimp email without including a link to your latest blog post. 

(00:03):
Welcome to the Launch With Words podcast, with your host, Bridget Willard. We're going to talk about all things, content, blogging, articles, videos, whatever has words nd goes on your website.

(00:21):
Hey there, thanks for joining me for episode seven. We're going to talk about email marketing. So you're using Active Campaign MailChimp, maybe even Constant Contact, but what are you sending in those email marketing campaigns? What are you sending in those emails? You should definitely send them links to your blog posts. Maybe even send them the blog post in its entirety. Tess Wittler recommends that we send a little bit of a story, our content, and maybe a tip, a coupon, some kind of call to action, but it really shouldn't be a month worth of your efforts. It shouldn't be a Christmas letter talking about Bobby and Jenny and Suzy and tae kwon do, ballet, and little league.

(01:15):
It could be. It could be if your company is sponsoring little league, but you don't want to be super personal. You, you want to be valuable, right? So keeping in that constant, um, cadence of publishing on your blog posts, and then following up with an email marketing -- maybe three to seven days later -- is a great way to remind people of your blog posts.

(01:46):
Warren Laine-Naida says that being invited to a user's email inbox is an honor. It's like being invited into their home. So when you have a customer or someone interested, subscribing, give them value. Now they may delete those emails. I delete tons of emails every single day, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested. It doesn't mean that I don't see that Jason Resnick is in my email box. It just means I cannot devote the time to deal with it.

(02:23):
And then don't forget that people save emails as well. I just got an email about three months ago from Goodyear tire service for my oil change. I, I haven't deleted it, but I haven't done anything with it. Doesn't mean that the email marketing campaign wasn't successful.

(02:45):
And a lot of my peers and small business owners look at email open rates that are 20% or 30% and think that it's a failure. It's not. This is not high school. This is not university. Having 20% open rate with email is awesome. 25, even better. 30 is amazing. 60% tells me you have an amazing list of people that only care about your product or service. And that's gold. That's marketing gold.

(03:17):
So pair, pair your email marketing campaigns with your blog posts. You want people to come and, you know, in waves. You don't, you don't open your doors at 9:00 AM and expect all of your customers for that day to be waiting. No. So give it a little time. Maybe send that out, um, like I said, four to seven days. Or maybe you're the kind of person who sends it out immediately to your email list and then shares it on social media, four to seven days later. One day on Twitter. Two days later on LinkedIn. Five days later on your Facebook Page. That's totally fine.

(04:06):
But the email marketing piece is super important. It's important because those people have specifically requested that you be in contact with them. They want to read information from your website. They want to know that you do bathroom remodels. They've want to know that you work on foreign vehicles. They want to know that you do eyelashes and brows. Right? So it's really important, really important. And I would urge you to kind of add this in. Maybe it's too much right now. Maybe adding email marketing is just totally overwhelming for you. That's fine. But think about it. Think about starting that. Think about a subscribing form. Think about sharing your blog posts another way to the audience that actually wants to read them.

(05:16):
Thanks for listening to Launch With Words, a podcast by BridgetWillard.com. If you like this podcast, why not go ahead and share it with your friends, small business owners, peers, your brother? Oh, I really appreciate your attention. If you have any ideas, contact me on my website. Follow me at @BridgetMWillard on Twitter. And I hope to see you on the next episode or the next season.

More Episodes

https://launch-with-words.castos.com/

Get the Launch With Words Plugin for free on WordPress:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/launch-with-words/