Blogging and email marketing are both popular internet marketing methods because they are free and easy to do from your own home. Ideally, an effective marketing campaign should include both to target your audience best; here are our top tips for integrating the two:
1. Turn blog readers into email contacts. If you already have an established base of readers, this should be relatively easy. People are already making the effort to seek out your blog and read your posts, so now you need to get their contact details and develop the relationship that you have with your customer. A good way to do this is to offer content via email that they can’t get on your blog, so that they have to become an email subscriber. This could be anything: an extended product review, an invite to an event, a voucher for something free or half price, etc. Make sure it’s actually something that they’ll want!
2. Refer email contacts back to your blog. Once you’ve got a good list of email contacts built up, you need to make sure that your email and blog complement each other. The email shouldn’t be like another blog, the information in both needs to link in. So, you might want to put a ‘sneak peek’ of something in your email that refers to a larger article on your blog, and vice versa. Many people now prefer to receive emails as a marketing method, so you could use your emails as a summary of your blog content, encouraging people to visit your blog to read the whole article.
3. Be consistent. Sending emails and blogging on a regular basis is essential. Blogging is something that many people get into enthusiastically, and then lose motivation for as time goes on. Keeping a regular flow of information is important for your customers, as it gives an impression of great activity and energy – something that is attractive in a business. You need to give your readers a reason to visit your blog regularly, and new content is the sole reason that they will type your address into their search bar. If you can make your posts and emails seasonal, all the better. Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas posts and emails are great ways to make your content relevant to your customer’s daily lives and strengthen the relationship that you have with them. If you are going away or find it difficult to post regularly, look for an free email marketing provider that gives you the option of drafting emails, and then sending them out automatically at a later date. This is a good way to ensure that your customers still get the emails that they expect, even if you can’t be there to hit ‘send’ yourself.
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