It is difficult, if not impossible, for a marketer to finish their first cup of coffee in the morning before they send out an email campaign or work on a piece of content.
And when you combine email and content marketing strategy , you are guaranteed to have a great morning! Content marketing and email are the perfect match, like peanut butter and jelly, Batman and Robin, burgers and fries, Han Solo and Chewbacca. Like any great combination, you probably only have one, but why?
A recent study by Ascend2, Email-driven content marketing , which examines how marketing professionals are combining email and content marketing, to determine what an effective email-driven content marketing strategy looks like. The survey was conducted on the week of August 27, 2018, and a total of 224 marketing professionals participated.
Grab a cup of coffee and review the following research findings and consider how you can tweak your strategy to optimize results.
Table of Contents
Channel performance: Email leads the march
Email is clearly considered the most effective content marketing channel to potential customers by 82% of marketing professionals. The next most effective channels are social networks and corporate websites or blogs for 54% and 51% of marketing professionals, respectively. Importance of email consistency across Ascend2’s various studies of content, email, data, and technology.
Define Your Email Content and Priority
Improving the quality of your leads is an email-based content marketing strategy top priority for the majority of marketing professionals. Increasing conversion rates and the number of leads or subscribers generated were also top priorities for 49%.
When reviewing your email and content priorities, it’s a good idea to test your content.
- If you want to improve the quality of your leads and increase conversions, you need high-quality content.
- Your content needs to focus on your audience. Identify the different segments you want to reach. Just like you segment your email list, segment and personalize your content.
- What types of content should you create? Here’s what research has revealed that works best for marketing professionals.
The most effective types of digital content for email
Video or motion graphics are considered the most effective type of digital content used for marketing purposes by 44% of marketing professionals. Almost as effective are webinars or events and research or ebooks for 43% and 41% of marketing professionals respectively.
Creating high-quality content is hard, so when you create a great piece of work, make sure to optimize your results by creating a variety of different types of content. For example, a research study might produce the following types of content:
- Report: Create a report that’s easy to scan and helps readers answer questions that matter to them.
- Video: Many people would rather watch a video than read a report. So give them what they want with your research video format.
- Webinar: Your research is an ideal tool to set the stage for your webinar topic. Use your research to identify an issue or opportunity, and your speaker can offer expert advice on that topic.
- Blog posts: A quick look at a research chart will inspire a blog post. If you have eight research charts, that’s eight blog posts.
- Infographics: A picture is floating around. Use your research to tell a story visually.
You do the math:
1 study = 1 report + 1 video + 1 webinar + 8 blog posts + 1 infographic
The good news! Marketing Professionals Are Achieving Priorities
More than half (54%) of marketing professionals consider an email-based content marketing strategy to be very successful in achieving priorities. So keep combining email and content marketing – it’s a great combination!
You can watch the whole thing again Email-driven content marketing survey summary report for instructions on how to create your email and content marketing strategy.
