Every business uses email to communicate with clients and land deals, but did you know that your emails might be an untapped tool for improving your company blog, and vice versa?
They both use the same tool, content, to persuade and inform the reader. Web writing might be a little more geared to search engines and emails may be more personalized, but it’s still words and images (and sometimes video.)
How can you make content work in both areas? Here are some tips to try.
Headlines And Subjects
Let’s start at the top. Are you cross-pollinating your email headline research and your blog titles?
Blog titles are phrased to attract the attention of your audience through keywords. Your audience between your email and your blog shouldn’t be different, so why should there be a difference between your emails subjects and blog titles? Once you know which keywords and phrases work well on one side, there’s no reason they won’t work on the other side.
If you have an article that audiences have responded to, you can flesh it out further in an email campaign and use subject lines similar to the article headline to attract attention. Follow it up with excellent and useful content and you have a recipe for engagement.
Copy Structure
Another thing to look at is the structure of your copy and your CTAs. Some marketers think there needs to be a difference between email structure and article structure, but we think it’s best to look at the data and see what performs well with your audience.
If you have a particular article format or email format that works well, try creating similar pieces in both channels. This will do two things. First, it will help you create a better brand voice because of the similar styles. Second, it should help improve engagement because similar content pieces have performed well in the past.
Doing Double Duty
People prefer to engage with brands in different ways. Some will prefer email, some will prefer web browsing or some other way. You might write an excellent article but someone in your email list might never see it because of their preference.
Your best pieces should perform double duty by using them in both places. If you’ve sent out an email that did really well, consider transforming it into a blog post. Perhaps you can expand on it based on feedback from your list. The same goes for excellent articles to emails.
Then, once it’s published, you can tell your list about it again and drive more traffic to the blog. You can also add a CTA to join your list by noting that this content was first published there. By cross-pollinating both channels with your best content, you’ll drive attention and traffic to both.
Whether it’s articles or emails, it’s all content. Your best pieces and copy techniques shouldn’t stay in one channel. Unifying these channels will make your brand voice stronger and ensure that your best content marketing gets the most exposure.
Footers and Signatures
An often overlooked—but important—part of your blog posts and emails is the footer area. A smart strategy is to add an opt-in somewhere in the footer of your blog promising subscribers regular email updates for upcoming posts.
As for your emails, you probably send out a lot of them on a regular basis. Add a link to your blog in your email signature to drive more traffic to your blog, be it through personal emails or marketing follow-up emails.