Category: Resources

Content marketing got its start at least as early as 1732, when Benjamin Franklin launched Poor Richard’s Almanack to share stories, advice and helpful tips — and to promote his own printing business.

In the 18th Century, Franklin could hardly have predicted the rise of the Internet. But he may have foreseen that content marketing provides a powerful way for businesses to connect with customers. He might also have guessed that every technological change in our communication tools would lead to new ways to reach customers via content marketing.

Content marketing has undergone a major change in 20 years. In 1998, such marketing was still primarily paper-based. By 2008, digital tools like blogs, podcasts, video and webinars made up a significant portion of ongoing content marketing efforts.

Now, there’s Alexa.

Voice-activated tools like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa are quickly becoming ever more present in our lives. That presence is still a very recent change, however. Notice how the Content Marketing Institute’s Five Content Marketing Trends to Watch in 2017 makes no mention of voice-based content marketing.

Yet Alexa in particular has become a content marketing channel to be reckoned with.

Why Alexa?

Amazon’s Alexa isn’t the only voice-interactive device available, but it offers two of the most exciting opportunities for content marketing:

• The creation and use of Alexa Skills
• The ability to integrate into the user’s home life in unprecedented ways

An Alexa Skill is, essentially, an app users can download to customize their Alexa’s capabilities. Commonly used Skills include those that allow Alexa to pair with a home’s security system or lighting. Amazon currently estimates that “tens of thousands” of Skills are available for the device, and an increasing number of them are developed by specific brands.

For instance, Sahail Ashraf at Business 2 Community recently praised Ask Stubb, a Skill designed to connect users to the Stubb’s barbecue sauce brand. Users reach Ask Stubb by simply saying “ask Stubb,” followed by their question. Ask Stubb responds with expert advice on a wide range of cooking topics — and it does so in the voice of Stubb’s particular character, creating the impression of talking directly to the brand as one would to a friend or a trusted colleague.

Similarly, the Ask Purina skill offers up advice in its own sphere of expertise, which it defines broadly. When users “ask Purina” a question, they don’t have to limit their queries to pet food. The brand’s Skill can answer a wide range of questions about various dog breeds, helping users determine which pet is the right choice for their family and how best to meet their pet’s needs, according to VentureBeat’s Cosette Jarrett.

A brand’s Alexa Skill allows it to shape its brand message and personality, build connections and reach customers in a highly personalized manner. And Alexa makes it possible to integrate this approach directly into customers’ home lives in ever more intimate ways.

A Pathway to More Personal Marketing

Content marketing has entered the home for decades. Periodicals created by specific businesspeople (Poor Richard’s Almanack) or brands (like the Michelin restaurant guides or LEGO’s fan magazine) have long lived on kitchen tables.

By acting as a voice-responsive part of the home environment, Alexa takes this intimacy one step further, speaking and responding almost like a member of the family.

The “family” feeling isn’t merely sentiment. It’s fact. According to Daniel Terdiman at Fast Company, a recent Google study of 1,600 Google Home and Amazon Alexa users found that 41 percent of voice assistant users say “it feels like talking to a friend, or at least another person.” Many even respond accordingly, saying “please” and “thank you” as part of their interactions.

The study also found that users tend to put their devices wherever the family congregates: 52 percent of voice assistant owners kept the device in the living room or family room. Perhaps most surprisingly, according to Terdiman, the bedroom outscored the kitchen: 25 percent of users keep Alexa or Home where they sleep, while just 22 percent use the device where they cook or eat.

And these users don’t merely accept engagement with brands; they approve of it. More than half of the study’s participants said they wanted to hear about deals or sales from Alexa or Home. Forty-eight percent liked receiving personalized tips, and 38 percent already used their devices to seek customer service or support from various companies.

The result? “Personalization at scale,” a marketing approach that creates a one-on-one feel for each of the thousands or millions of customers that access it, according to Chitra Iyer, editor-in-chief of MarTech Advisor.

The Challenge of Scaling Voice-Based Content Marketing

Past attempts at personalization at scale haven’t always resulted in useful information for customers. In some cases, Rupa Ganatra notes at Forbes, it’s actually pushed people away, as in the common situation where browser ads recommend products that the use has already purchased.

Sometimes, too, marketing efforts will use their best guess as to customer desires based on demographic data, with occasionally off-putting results. “Traditionally, audience segmentation was done by categories such as age, gender and disposable incomes,” Dr. Janet Bastiman, chief science officer at StoryStream, tells Ganatra. “Today, retailers need to be looking at how their customers actually want to engage with them and look at what they’re interested in.”

For Bastiman, this means more ads about smart devices and computer hardware. For users engaging with Alexa or other voice assistant devices, it means focusing their attention on the Skills that are most useful or interesting to them.

Using Alexa For Content Marketing: 4 Tips for Success

Fortunately, Amazon has made it relatively easy for companies of any size to engage with customers through the company’s various voice devices. The Alexa Skills Kit, or ASK, provides the tools necessary to build customized Skills, which can be provided easily to customers through Amazon’s website.

As with any form of content marketing, Alexa can help companies get mediocre results, or it can help companies get outstanding results.

Here are a few key points to consider when launching into the Alexa content marketing sphere. These should nudge your results toward the “outstanding” side of the ledger.

1. Rethink Your Keywords

Humans use language differently when conducting text searches versus voice searches, according to Ashraf, this time writing for Locowise. For instance, a text search often boils down to basic focus words: “best burgers in Seattle” or “how much to feed 8 pound dog.”

When the same query is presented to Alexa, however, it gets longer. The user has to get the device’s attention, then phrase the query in a way that tells Alexa what is needed. Alexa has no response to “best burgers in Seattle.” To get the answer they seek, users need to be more verbose: “Alexa, tell me where to find the best burger restaurants in Seattle.”

Brands and marketers have been calibrating content to fit the short, punchy form of text keywords for some time, but the results from voice systems using these keyword algorithms can come up short. Think about how users might ask the device to access your Skill, and then how they might ask that Skill specific questions.

2. Use Your Subject-Matter Expertise

Whisky maker Johnnie Walker has developed a deep understanding not only of the processes required to make consistently enjoyable spirits, but also of how their own products fit into the wider world of whisky.

The company’s Skill, named “Johnnie Walker,” provides Alexa users with their own personal guide to whisky. Users can find bottles that fit their personal preferences or even participate in a guided tasting session.

While Johnnie Walker could have limited the Skill to a voice-based FAQ, the company instead decided to use its years of accumulated knowledge to become the kind of trusted guide that both novice and experienced whisky drinkers can trust — sharing and thus building its reputation as an expert in the field.

3. Make Existing Information Easier to Access

Many weather apps include pollen measurements, air quality indicators and other tools that allergy sufferers can use to determine how (un)comfortable they’re likely to be on any given day.

However, these tools are often buried within broader apps or websites, which can make them a pain to access. Enter Johnson & Johnson, makers of allergy medicine brand Zyrtec, which created “Your Daily AllergyCast.”

This Skill offers information about weather, pollen counts and specific allergens in response to a single question, saving users time and making them more likely to access its information. The Skill can even build a personal Allergy Impact Score, which allows users to make more informed decisions about their daily needs.

4. Above All, Be Useful

“When you can just speak to your voice device to order your shopping, renew your car insurance, or offer holiday inspiration, the balance of power for brands hangs in the balance,” Content Marketing Association consultant editor Dominic Mills notes. “This places a premium, first on brand presence, and second on utility or helpfulness.”

After all, the power of Alexa Skills as content marketing assets lies in their use. Customers who download your company’s Skill but never use it aren’t engaging with your company or brand. The more helpful a Skill is, the more likely that users will return to it again and again — and place your brand top of mind every time they do.

Images by: seewhatmitchsee/©123RF Stock Photo, pressmaster/©123RF Stock Photo, Andres Urena

Case studies offer a concrete, real-world look at how a product or service impacts a person, organization, process or event. As such, they’re prized by businesses, who prefer to buy things that already work.

But what makes a great case study? The answer is deceptively simple.

We say “deceptively” because case studies don’t appear to leave much room for creativity. The basic structure of any case study is always the same:

• Defining the problem
• Introducing the solution
• Revealing the results

But if you unpack those components just a little, you’ll see a story arc that closely mirrors Joseph Campbell’s outline for a heroic tale.

That’s the key. Great case studies tell classic, heroic stories. That’s the difference between a case study (and any B2B marketing, really) that imprints itself on our memories, and one that is quickly forgotten.

Here, we explore the science and art of creating a compelling case study that’s driven by good storytelling.

It starts where most great tales begin: With a little alcohol.

Tell Better Stories: B2B Marketers Can Learn a Lot From the B2C World

Businesses have understood the power of storytelling for years, and they’ve used it to their advantage. Budweiser’s 2014 Super Bowl ad took the top spot for popularity that year by telling the story of a puppy who makes friends with a Clydesdale.

Budweiser’s success doesn’t surprise Johns Hopkins researchers Keith Quesenberry and Michael Coolsen, who analyzed 108 Super Bowl commercials to explain Budweiser’s success in a Fall 2014 article in The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice. “People are attracted to stories,” Quesenberry tells Harrison Monarth at the Harvard Business Review, “because we’re social creatures and we relate to other people.”

Our neurology also plays a role. According to Buffer co-founder Leo Widrich, writing at Lifehacker, reading or listening to a list of bullet points activates the language-processing areas of the brain, two relatively small parts known as Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. But that list of bullet points doesn’t travel much further: The rest of the brain is pretty quiet.

Not so when we hear stories, however. The language processing areas of the brain light up in response to a story — but so does every other part of the brain that would engage if we were actually living the story.

Tell a story about eating delicious foods or enjoying a crisp digital view, and a reader’s sensory cortex lights up.

Tell a story about zipping through traffic to deliver a perfectly timed package, and a reader’s motor cortex lights up.

Tell a story about an adorable puppy becoming best friends with a gentle horse, and our limbic system — the part of the brain that handles emotion — goes into overdrive.

The last one is particularly important, Shawn Callahan points out at Anecdote, because strong emotions tend to build stronger memories. Seeking to process and contextualize emotions, the brain builds a story around them that makes sense, and it remembers the story told.

Stories help us remember. Emotional stories stick around the longest. And an outstanding case study leverages both of these facts.

How to Weave Those Stories Into the Rigid Structure of a Case Study

Quesenberry attributes our love of stories to our need for socialization. But a case study “lives” on its own. Potential clients and customers often discover it online, with no human interaction attached.

To convey emotion, build connection and drive memory, your case study will need to stand on its own. And to do that, it needs the narrative body of a great story.

The Challenge

Every great story begins with a challenge or conflict that the hero needs to overcome. And every great case study begins the same way.

Start with the problem the customer or client faced. Robert Levin at Speak SMB offers a list of questions that can help a case study’s creator find a vivid approach to the issue:

• What is the biggest, most aggravating problem our customers have (that our offerings can solve)?
• What are one or two things we do that have the biggest impact on that big, aggravating problem?
• What does success look like when a customer uses what we offer?
• What are the top one or two things we want prospective customers to know about our product or service?

Since the challenge portion of the case study sets up the customer as the hero who will eventually slay the dragon, it’s important to avoid the same major pitfalls that make novel or movie heroes unlikeable.

For instance, avoiding making the hero too weak or helpless. Instead, demonstrate early that the customer had the skills necessary to solve this problem — critical thinking, budgeting, or passion — just not a particular solution.

The Search for a Solution

Once the hero knows what the challenge is, he or she typically sets out on a quest. The quest forms the bulk of most stories. It’s where the emotional stakes start to climb, and where readers start to identify with the hero.

In a case study, this means talking about the search for the solution, not just the solution itself. Amanda Zantal-Wiener at HubSpot recommends asking questions like:

• How did you (the customer) hear about our product or service?
• Who was involved in the decision process?
• What was most important to you when evaluating your options?

The Solution

Once your hero customer knows their challenge and has journeyed to find the tools to defeat it, it’s time for the final epic battle. Or, in a case study, it’s time to discuss the solution.

In the solution stage, it’s essential to avoid a too-quick, clichéd ending. “And then we swooped in and saved the day” might summarize the end of the story, but it shouldn’t be the end of the story.

Instead, dig into the details. How easy was it to implement your company’s proposed solution? How long did it take? What did the customer do to get the solution up and running? What difficulties, if any, did they face? What advice does the customer have for anyone who might take the same path in the future?

The Results

“And then they lived happily ever after.”

In a case study, this classic ending looks less like a cozy castle and more like data, Dan Shewan writes at Wordstream.

“If possible, the data you include in your case study should directly reflect the challenges faced by your protagonist in Act I,” Shewan says. In other words, if your customer needed a way to decrease operational costs, the data should show how much those costs went down as a result of implementing your solution.

If the project isn’t particularly data-driven, Shewan recommends gathering evidence in the form of quotes, video or images — anything that shows the results at work.

The Embellishment

Every great story has vivid, memorable details that speak to the sensory, motor or emotional centers of the brain, so don’t forget to weave these into your case study, as well.

Start with a summary, Breonna Bergstrom writes at CoSchedule. In three sentences, shorten the story to the problem, solution and results. Place this executive summary at the top of the finished case study, where it can operate like a book blurb or movie trailer, enticing readers into the story.

Add vivid detail, but do so sparingly. Levin at SparkSMB recommends focusing on concrete, specific details, especially in the use of titles and quotes. “X Corp. Finds Success With Our Product Y” isn’t as vivid or compelling as “How X Corp. Doubled Its Profits” or “How X Corp Reduced Operating Costs by 15 Percent While Improving Product Quality.”

For instance, Christine Parizo recommends offering advice to prospective buyers in the form of a quote from a key person on the customer’s team. Choosing thoughtfully also allows you to set up this person as another hero in the story, further building goodwill. As Parizo notes, “Who doesn’t want to be the IT Director that saved the company thousands a month?”

Next Steps: Introduce Your Case Study to the World

You’ve stuck to the story, polished the details, and produced a compelling tale of business adversity and eventual triumph, complete with pitch-perfect quotes from key connections within your customer’s organization. You’ve succeeded!

Almost.

As Camille Rasmussen at TechValidate notes, a case study that isn’t distributed wisely isn’t any more valuable than a case study that was never written at all.

While your choices for case study distribution depend on the particular behaviors and customs within your prospective customers’ industry or industries, Devon McDonald at OpenView recommends considering popular options like email campaigns, press releases and displaying the finished case study prominently on a website or customer portal. Don’t forget to announce your case study on social media, as well.

Your story matters. Make sure the world hears it.

Images by: rawpixel, Štefan Štefančík

Where are you reading this right now?

While you may be sitting at a computer, chances are good that you are reading this on your phone.

Three out of every four Americans now has a smartphone. It doesn’t take a statistician to look around and see everyone on their phones, so your omnichannel content marketing strategy should already consider mobile phone technology.  

In our Digital Marketing is Interwoven series, we have been analyzing how a variety of digital trends impact content marketers. While we will focus on specific mobile trends here, we also wanted to take a step back to consider what overall mobile use means for content marketers today.

Good content starts with good writing.

Focus on Good Writing More Than Ever

Research by the Nielsen Norman Group found that readers understand short, simple text on mobile devices just as well as they do on computers; however, they slow down when reading difficult text on mobile.

This underscores perhaps the most important takeaway about all writing: Your content should be as easy to understand as possible, no matter whom or what channels you’re writing for.

As a result of their research findings, NN/g emphasizes the importance of brevity when it comes to writing website content. They do include a caveat that longer content is OK if it serves the purpose of entertaining or informing — which all content should do.

While NN/g is right that every word should count, content marketers should prioritize being comprehensive for two primary reasons:

1. Content shock is real. To stand out, yours has to be among the best of its kind — which often means telling your readers everything they might want to know about a given topic.
2. As search algorithms continue to evolve, they focus less on keywords and more on content value. Search engines consider longer content to be more valuable, presumably because it covers the topic in-depth.

Research by groups like UXMatters has shown that mobile users scroll to the end of articles just as much as desktop users, meaning brevity does not necessarily matter more on mobile devices.

Key takeaways:

• Write short, punchy copy. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Formula is a great way to measure the readability of your writing. This uses factors like word length and sentence length to determine a score as a US grade level (5th grade through college graduate). Higher grade levels mean the text is more difficult to read, so aim for 9th grade or lower. You can run your readability statistics in Microsoft Office or use the Hemingway App, which includes insights about where you can improve your writing.
• Write scannable copy. Content that is easy to read is also scannable. Lead with the most important information, and include signposts like headings and subheadings, bulleted lists, and bold text to help readers.
• Don’t be afraid of longform. A good rule of thumb for articles like this one is to aim for around 1,500 words. We have found that this strikes a good balance between informative and digestible. Consider even longer-form content like ultimate guides, as well.

For comparison, the article you’re reading now has 1,524 words and is written at the 9th grade level.

Consider Different Content Formats

We discussed creating content for different channels in a recent post about what social media trends mean for content marketers. You should also think about creating different content for the mobile and desktop experiences.

Video is becoming increasingly important, so it should be a factor in your content marketing strategies. Vidyard has an excellent guide to optimizing video for mobile devices.

Some older staples of content marketing, such as infographics or PDFs, don’t work well on mobile phones. Case in point:

"Read my EBook on MobileFirst development. It's a PDF designed for an 8.5×11 piece of paper."

— Bill Seitz (@BillSeitz) April 10, 2018

For this reason, Intel’s Luke Kintigh recommends converting infographic elements to a slideshow or a progressive scroll.

Until recently, many people saved longer-form content for desktop reading. It’s still difficult to find mobile-friendly whitepapers, though we predict you’ll see more of them. “The Future of VR and 360 Video,” by Thomas Baekdal at Baekdal.com, is a good one.

Key takeaways:

• Optimize your videos for mobile. There is no point in creating them otherwise.
• Consider reformatting infographics into something mobile-friendly like a slideshow. You can also slice and dice infographics into smaller pieces that are readable on smaller devices.
• Create mobile-friendly versions of PDFs. Here is a useful guide for this. You can also give users the option to email themselves a link to your content so they can view it later on their desktops.

Inform Your Strategy With Location-Based Data

Always meet your target audience where they are. With mobile technology, you can do that literally.

Location-based data presents one of the bigger marketing opportunities brought on by mobile technology, which has given rise to the term “micro-moments.” These happen when we reflexively turn to our phones to do, learn, find, watch or buy something.

While micro-moments aren’t new (location data company Tamoco has an interesting history on the evolution of location-based marketing technology, from IP addresses to augmented reality), advancements in location-based marketing technology continue to improve how brands can be there when they happen.

This data is not just relevant to advertisers who geotarget their ads or send push notifications to their apps. The biggest value may be in creating audiences and consumer path maps, says Yory Wurmser at eMarketer.

“The data/audience dimension is uniquely different with mobile vs. desktop,” says Ian Karnell at Phunware. “As users go about their daily lives with their smartphones, they leave a digital trail that tells brands who they are, where they have been, their preferences and where they will go next.”

Content marketers need to consider where their target audiences will be when they interact with the brand or need what it offers. The content someone needs from your website may vary whether they are on their phone or laptop. For example, a driver is more likely to search for “roadside assistance” on the mobile version of their insurance provider’s website.

These insights can also impact what content marketers create. For example, you might see that those who walk into your outdoors store often frequent local yoga studios, as well, and could benefit from content about yoga retreats.

Google tells us that more than 40 percent of mobile searches have local intent. In addition, more than 85 percent of engagement with brands is local, says Wesley Young at Local Search Association, so we should include local keywords in our content, as well.

Augmented reality (AR) is also part of the location-based marketing trend. While that is too much to touch on here, you can check out the ThinkMobiles guide to developing an AR app if you’re interested in more.

Key takeaways:

• Leverage your data. Use mobile data to identify insights about the content your audience is interested in and when/where they are when they need it.
• Make your content locally relevant. Consider local content in your keyword strategy and when determining what content should live on your desktop and mobile sites.
• Don’t own much user data? Get it elsewhere. We use Buzzsumo to validate general interest around a topic. Sites like Quora and Reddit are helpful as well.

Optimize Your Content for Voice Search

According to Google, 20 percent of all mobile searches are voice searches. With the introduction of products like Alexa, this trend isn’t only related to mobile’s Siri and Google Assistant, but that makes it all the more relevant.

Vivid Seats SEO Director Bryson Meunier says you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for voice if you already implement content marketing and SEO best practices — especially if you already optimize your content for mobile.  

The most notable impact of voice search on content marketers is the way we optimize our writing. Fewer searches follow the traditional “[location] + [vendor type]” search format. Rather, they’re phrased as more conversational, long-tail searches.

So, instead of saying “Atlanta tire shop” to Google Assistant, a user might say “Hey Google, I need new tires.” Your content can support these search results by focusing on the context and reasons people would search for your tire shop.

Some content marketers find this to be more difficult, but we believe writing should always be conversational while remaining professional.

In his study on voice search results, Brian Dean at Backlinko found that more than 40 percent of results came from Google’s “featured snippets, and that Google sources results from long-form content.” This is great news for content marketers and supports our recommendation to create longer, in-depth content.

Key takeaways:

• Keep doing what you’re doing. If you need a refresher on mobile optimization, there is always Google’s Mobile SEO Guidelines.
• Write more conversational, long-tail content. Don’t get hung up on individual keywords; phrase content as questions and focus on FAQs instead. Meunier recommends using Answer the Public (free), Question Samurai (signup required) and StoryBase (paid) to find popular questions among your audience members.
• Brush up on Google’s newest tech. Dean recommends creating Actions on Google. It’s also worth checking out Google’s reintroduction to featured snippets before writing your content.

There are many other trends to consider as mobile truly is at the center of our day-to-day interactions with brands, businesses and content. Stay tuned for our next article on how digital marketing trends impact content marketing.

Images by: ververidis/©123RF Stock Photo, everythingpossible/©123RF Stock Photo, seewhatmitchsee/©123RF Stock Photo

The various practices of digital marketing are deeply intertwined. SEO affects paid efforts, and content can make or break your social media campaign.

However, few digital marketing concepts are as closely connected as email marketing and content creation. When marketers grow concerned about their email efforts, they often turn to content.

The past two years have been hectic in the world of email marketing, and many industry professionals are changing how they strategize, bridging silos in order to run successful campaigns.

Check out some of the latest email trends below to learn how content marketers are serving as a valuable support system for their profitable strategy.  

Let’s Bury the Myth That Email as a Platform is Ineffective

The first step to understanding the value of email and content marketing is dispelling the idea that either tactics are dying. Over the past few years, marketing professionals have fervently defended email marketing from seemingly unseen forces claiming its demise.

According to research by eMarketer, email marketing has an average ROI of 122 percent, four times higher than social media (28 percent), direct mail (27 percent), and paid search (25 percent). Even though marketers only invest 16 percent of their budget on average, it makes up 23 percent of average total sales.  

Sarah Peterson from Unsettle.org defends email marketing by explaining it’s one of the only things marketers can control. Google algorithms change each year, meaning sites can gain or lose SERPs on a whim. Facebook recently changed its algorithm, throwing the marketing world through a loop.

However, you will always have your email contacts and will always be able to reach them.  

The idea that email is dying has gained such a ferver in the past few years that Jordie van Rijn even created the website Emailisnotdead.com with monthly updated statistics proving exactly how not-dead email is. Check back for use statistics and links to supporting articles any time someone tries to tell you email is dying.  

If email marketing is alive and well, then why are so many people concerned about it? Why are people convinced that the tool is on its way out?

Where Email Marketing Typically Goes Wrong

While email marketing isn’t dying, it does have its problems — like every other marketing tactic. Of course, just because email marketing has it’s problems doesn’t mean it needs to be completely rejected. Dismissing email marketing for its flaws is a waste of potential resources.

Understanding these flaws and where they come from can help your brand overcome systematic problems.

Marketers Lack the Resources to Grow

Some companies take the high ROI that comes with email marketing for granted. They don’t see the need to improve on their email strategy because they’re focused on other channels that are struggling more. They focus in on putting out fires instead of growing what works.

However, just because something works well doesn’t mean it couldn’t use help to improve. Chad S. White, research director for Litmus, polled hundreds of email marketers to determine their biggest email challenges for 2018. Among this responses include:

• Poor coordination between other departments (16.4%)
• Insufficient staffing (14.4%)
• Bad strategy or leadership (12.8%)
• Lack of quality data and integration (12.2%)

This shows that departments want to grow their email efforts and provide valuable resources to readers, but struggle to prove the value of their work. Without the support they need (in the form of co-workers, leadership, staff and tools), email efforts are bound to flounder — giving the impression of a dying strategy.

Customers Are Wary About What They Subscribe To

Another issue that email managers highlight is list growth. It’s harder in 2018 to grow an email list than ever, and even harder to get people to pay attention.

Gary Vaynerchuk says consumers are more careful with email in the same way that they’re careful when liking brands on Facebook. People used to like and subscribe to anything. Now that they know what they’re signing up for, they’re more cautious.

“Once you understand that marketers have ruined it, you’re a little bit more careful with that like button and email sign up,” he writes.

However, consumers are still willing to sign up for email newsletters if they feel like they know what they’re getting.

Email Fatigue Means Customers Are Tuning Out

An additional problem that marketing managers contend with is email fatigue. The team at Precision Dialogue recently explored this concept and why it is driving customers away from email. While your customers might unsubscribe because they feel overwhelmed by email as a whole, it’s more common that they don’t like what you’re sending out or how often you’re sending content.

Essentially, blaming your customers for the death of email as a whole will only hinder your email marketing strategy. You’re better off looking inward to see what ails your email content.

How Content Marketing Can Help Email Marketing Grow

Your email marketing can’t be successful on its own. No amount of curated lists and strategic sending can make email marketing succeed without great content.

In an article for Content Marketing Institute, Jodi Harris shared an infographic highlighting how content and email work together. Both B2B and B2C companies stand to benefit from these tools. In fact, 93 percent of all marketers use email to distribute content, and 74 percent of marketers say it’s the most important content distribution channel in their arsenal.

Marco Marini, CEO at ClickMail, shares some of his own company’s statistics on email marketing relevance. Of email marketers surveyed who consider themselves very successful, 55 percent named content creation the most important key to success. This was followed by email personalizations at 17 percent.

One of the main reasons successful marketers are denying the death of email is because they have taken steps to improve the email experience with content. By improving your content marketing and intertwining it with your email strategy, your overall traffic and lead generation efforts can grow.

You Should Focus Primarily on Content

Email marketing has plenty of moving parts. There are segments, layouts and other factors that managers worry about. This often makes content a forgotten element, as marketers become so worried about how they will send it that what they send takes a back seat.

“Most marketers will tell you that [content] is the most time-consuming part of their strategy, but it’s also the most important,” the team at PostUp writes. “If your content doesn’t compel your reader to keep clicking, email’s revenue potential is wasted.”

The first step toward improving your email marketing is making sure what you have to say is important and relevant.

Your Content Needs to Align With What You Promised

The team at AWeber Communications says marketers have a habit of saying what they want to get people to sign up for their emails, only to bombard them with irrelevant messages. If you have ever signed up to “receive industry news and insights” from a blog only to get a sales consultant pitching you the next day, you understand this.

Brands that struggle to maintain subscribers often aren’t giving readers what they want. This is one big reason why subscribers churn.

Your Email Content Needs to be Unique

The team at IZEA highlights a few ways people make mistakes with email marketing. Too often, they send the same content in their email bodies as their social media campaigns. This burns people out: Your email is irrelevant to people who already saw the content on Facebook.

Additionally, no one likes to be on the receiving end of a “spray and pray” approach to content marketing, where brands share their content everywhere and to everyone and hope it gets picked up somehow.

Email marketing is ideal for honing existing customers and building customer loyalty. The team at Apsis points out that a 5-percent increase in customer retention can grow an online business by 25 to 95 percent. Email provides a medium for growing loyalty. While social content might target new customers, email is the home base for your existing customers. You can be different and more loyalty-focused.   

Your Email Content Should be Highly Personalized

Along with creating targeted content for loyal audiences, your email campaigns should be highly personalized. It’s unlikely that every piece of content you create will be relevant to everyone on your list. That’s what segmentation and personalization are for.

“The best content marketers who are also great email marketers are now starting to think about email and content as connective tissue for the broader digital journey,” writes Damian Borichevsky, SVP of customer success and business development at OneSpot.

In particular, using data to determine which content will have the highest success rates in email can help marketers improve their efficiency.

“In order to create personalized experiences, you need information about your subscribers,” Tori Johnson writes for Campaign Monitor. “You need to know their preferences, interests, location, gender, age, and other attributes in order to send compelling campaigns.”

These factors actually play off of each other. Not only will you know what content to share with your email clients, but your email clients can determine what content you create.

You Need to Anticipate Customer Changes

One of the biggest mistakes in email marketing is placing a customer in one segment and never changing them. As customer behaviors change, their needs change and they might not be right for certain segments anymore.

“Subscriber expectations change as they move through your process,” the team at GetResponse writes. “To provide value, recognize various needs across the email marketing funnel.”

If you’re not analyzing customers to understand what segments they fit into or where they fall in your sales funnel, then you’re bound to share irrelevant content and turn off anyone who signs up for your email list.

The people who are most likely to say email marketing is dying are also the ones who aren’t doing it well. They’re also likely the same people who aren’t focusing on the content they share in their email bodies. By combining content marketing and email marketing, brands can reap the high ROI that email marketing is known for while ignoring others panicking around them.

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