Content marketingâs underrated rocket fuel

When you launch a content campaign, you probably send an email to promote it to your database at some point. You might think that this email will only drive traffic from your current database, however my experience has taught me that by making email the first channel you launch on and with a little work, you can increase the conversion rate for people outside your database – i.e new visitors. And I don’t mean with the forward button.

3, 2, 1…Send!?

It’s the momentum gained from that launch email that is so valuable, for 6 key reasons:

Email helps you optimise your landing page
The instant surge of traffic means you can split test, and optimise your landing page so the new customers that get there, are more likely to convert.

Email kickstarts social shares
If you carefully encourage your database to share your content on social networks, you can get almost instant social proof (i.e social share numbers displaying on your page) This has been proven to increase your conversion rate.

Email with social can get you indexed
These social shares will help your page get indexed by Google so if it’s optimised for particular keywords you’ll start to rank, and get your share of search traffic sooner.

Email testing helps you optimise all channels
If you’re split-testing, you can use the results of these tests to inform your headline, tweet content, ad creative and other persuasive copy for your webpage via the results of your email split test, to optimise everything!

Email triggers help you nurture content leads better
You can set up a series of automated campaigns that fire once a contact has converted that:

Include related content, so you can gauge interest in other topics and build a richer profile of that customer’s interests. This can help you score your leads.

Promote related products and services – hey, if you’re interested in a topic enough to download something, then you’re a reasonably warm lead – if not right now, in the future. So don’t miss the obvious opportunity to start nurturing them now.

Click to view the full email

Email can help you get feedback
In addition, you can automate a campaign that asks readers to share your content or provide feedback. This example shown right asks for a Tweet, Google +1, or comment on our ‘Data Driven Email Marketing’ whitepaper. It’s worth asking, and even if it doesn’t result in a share, it at least gets readers onto your social channels.

I may be biased, working for dotMailer, but the numbers show that our content marketing campaigns wouldn’t have been anywhere near as successful without email – via emailing our list and when promoted in 3rd party newsletters. I believe email is the best catalyst for the best content campaigns, capable of getting your campaign the kind of reach that you might pay a celebrity or ‘influencer’ for. Content marketers – don’t overlook it!

Click to view the full email